Has anyone here heard the story on how the US railways are all the width they are because of Roman chariots (or something like that)? I can't find any information on it, but I remember seeing a show where they said that the railway systems of the past were all different widths - and because of this, were incompatible. When a standard was agreed upon, they went with today's standard width. I'm not sure if this was chosen because on manufactuer was more influencial or not... But it all came down to how there were roads made by the Romans that were a certain width. These roads developed ruts and later builders of cars or whatever had to build to the same wheelbase inorder to fit these ruts. When locomotives were made, it was easier to just use existing tooling. So.... long story short (too late) today's railways are as wide as they are today because of some dude in Itay years and years ago. (I will try to find a link or something, but I saw this on some PBS show years ago).

I was wondering if any of you knew any other little stories like that. I know that the memory structure on current PC's is still based on PC's from the 80's, but I don't really know how the original figure was reached.

Another little story is how US NTSC (Never The Same Color ) television uses 60 fields (or 30 frames) per second. This was becuase of the US's power system being 120volts AC. The power basically became the timeing device. Someone determined that all humans really need is 45 fields per second to similate a moving image, so the 60 is really over kill and a waste of information. Needing to put out 30 frames per second, NTSC had to sacrifice scan lines per frame. In contrast, PAL uses fewer frames per second (but still enough) but allow for more scan lines. Because of this, PAL has always been considered to be better than NTSC. So it is interesting that the first TV makers in the US were not limited by their own means, but by Edison for picking the number 120. It would be interesting to go back and find out "why 120?"

This is all from the top of my head, so feel free to correct me.