All Roads lead to Rome.

Some time ago I worked with an Engineer who was looking for a way to transport rocket boosters from Utah to the Space Center in Florida. The contract for the boosters for the Space Shuttle was open for bids, and we had the facility and technology to build them, but could we deliver them?

We spent months figuring out how to get them across country, including figuring out how to get them around overpasses, including letting most of the air out of the tires to get them under, and going off and then back on. We could not use the railroad tunnels because they were not big enough. The question came up, why are our vehicles, railroads and roads set to the standards they are? I had to admit it was something I had never thought about. Prepare your self for more USELESS INFORMATION!

When the Industrial revolution created the ability to mass produce goods, first Trains and later cars needed to be of common dimensions, after all the rails don't change in distance between the rails, so all locomotives and cars had to have the same wheel track. The early locomotive and car manufacturers used the same dimensions that had been used to standardize wagons, In fact early automobiles, if you let some of the air out of the tires could be driven on the tracks. Well, where did that dimension come from?

The wagons were standardized so that they would run in the ruts that existed all over Europe, and were created by the Romans in their efforts to control the entire world. The reason these ruts are the same distance apart all over Europe is that the Romans had standardize their chariots and wagons so they would run in the same tracks.

Well, what decided that standard?

If you took two horses and put them side by side and left a little room that became the distance between the two wheels for the chariot. In other words, the wheel aligned with the horses asses.

Like a lot of things in life, we are today living to a set of rules established thousands of years ago by a couple of horses asses.