[Sca-cooks] period measures

[Stefan li Rous]

John Kemker replied to me with:
> You might want to look at this:
> http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.htm

Yep. They pretty much confirm the facts as I understood them. *I* didn't imply there was some fantastic connection. It is indeed a rather logical progression. Interesting none the less.

They make a big deal about how two horses yoked together will have to be a
certain width, so this size is inevitable, but that is itself a rather general
statement. My understanding is that the railroad gauge is pretty close to the
width of the Roman chariot wheels, even though the wheel width could vary a
lot more if you were starting again and were using the width of the two horses
as your requirement. If you have wheel ruts ground into stone, you break less
axles if you choose your wheel width to match this, rather than being a inch
or two off of that.

They do point out the momentum that is usual in human actions. Which is what I
was referring to below in my comments about the OS and the qwerty keyboard.
Both are obsolete, but momentum creates reasons not to change them, even
though such a change could result in greater efficency. Applying this to the
history of food, it is part of the reason you don't see hamburgers in the
Middle Ages and why the American turkey caught on so fast in the Old World. In
the first case, there was no precedent. Things seldom spring up as a complete
item, they evolve from something. In the later case, there were European birds
similar to the turkey. The Europeans knew how to cook such an animal.


>> It is interesting that we still use the troy ounce and that it can be
> traced
>> to the average wieght of a particular type of wheat at a particular time.
> Much
>> as the railway guage used today can be traced to the spacing of the Roman
>> chariot wheels. Or why much of the world uses a technically inferior
> computer
>> operating system or the qwerty keyboard.
>>
>> Stefan

--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas         StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
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