Measurements of US space shuttles can be traced to the horse-driven chariots of ancient Rome, for good reason
A time has come in the management profession when sub-areas of the subject matter are progressively becoming disciplines in their own right. This includes areas as marketing, organisation studies and manufacturing. Further, like all disciplines they tend to they acquire an interdisciplinary frame. The situation is made more complex by the fast changing character of the domains.
This is an important stage in the evolution of the subject of management. In addition, contextual concerns have to be factored in. Consider the finance domain, which spans from accounting to auditing, taxation to sourcing of funds. Somewhere in between it picks up areas such as international finance, corporate finance, micro-finance and more. It’s not uncommon to see single theme institutions emerging.
It does, however, raise several unprecedented issues including the need to define the sub-areas themselves. Consider the case of auditing. Conventionally, auditing can be divided into internal audit and external audit.
In popular imagination, auditors are rule-bound and un-accommodating. The auditors, in their turn, plead helplessness because they have to follow the professional standard and what their institutes legislate. This need not always be as rigid as it is made out to be. The real practice of audit may be made more adaptable.
The bald truth is that over a period of time the origin of a practice may itself have been forgotten. The practice having sanctified the process as a ritual, may itself have overlooked, how the need to have it in the first place arose!
Unfortunately, unless tracking is done and the trail followed, the reason for change remains vague, contested and problematic. An explanation may help.
The US standard rail road gauge-distance between rails is 4ft 8.5inches. This came about because the initial rail road was designed by English expatriates. The expatriates were drawing upon their first experiences of building the pre-rail road tramways, wherein the same gauge was used.
The people who built the tramway used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons. The wheels of the wagons had identical spacing. The spacing of the wheels of the wagons was determined for making them useable on some of the old distance roads in England. The wheels had to run in the ruts which existed on the roads or they would break.
The ruts of the roads of England came as a legacy of imperial Rome which built the first long-distance roads in Europe, including in England, for transporting troops. These roads, while they were un-metalled, continued to serve as the precursors.
So, it happens that Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts. The ruts decided the distance between wheels, so that the wheels of the wagons were not destroyed. Thus, it is that the US rail road gauge for 4ft 8.5 inches was derived from the original specifications established to suit imperial Roman war chariots!
Now, one might well wonder where from the Romans got their specifications. The answer is simple: The Roman war chariot was pulled by two horses. The chariots were made wide enough to accommodate the back of two war horses. The standard space which the rears of two war chariot horses, together, occupied was 4ft 8.5inches.
In short, the measurement of the rears of two Roman imperial war chariot horses decided the space of the American railroad gauge. This measurement became something to stand by and stand up for.
Talking of standards of accounting or auditing one has to avoid such pit falls. A post script which makes it more interesting is that the matter didn’t stop at the American railroad.
It went on to determine the design features of a major space shuttle. The space shuttle needed solid rocket boosters or SRBs. They were made by a company called Thiokol which had its factory in the American State of Utah.
From Utah the space shuttle had to be transported to the launching pad. This was done by rail. The rail had to pass through a tunnel. The tunnel was slightly wider than the rail road track. The rocket girth had to comply! And so the legacy has carried on. Can anyone question the fundamentals hereIJ