| Miscellaneous |
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This article comes to me from my architect daughter who has often encountered military specs. The author is unknown. There is a dispute in classical circles as to the veracity of this reasoning, but it's still a good story.
The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that measure chosen for the standard?
That is the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.
Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railway tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge, then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rotten ruts? The first long distance roads built in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were made by Roman war chariots. Since all of the chariots were made for or by the Imperial Roman Army, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.Thus, we have the answer to the original question.
The United States Standard Railroad Gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification (Military Spec) for an Imperial Roman Army Chariot.
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