Alexander E. Braun

Of Silicon Streets, Typewriters, and Horses' Rumps
July 23, 2008

Spanish philosopher and poet, Jorge Santayana’s aphorism that “Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it,” is widely quoted but generally ignored. I got direct proof of its truth at the recent SEMICON West. While resting my unhappy throbbing feet and downing a double shot of much-needed caffeine, I spoke with the representative of a well-known test company. The conversation eventually drifted from new products to work horror stories, and he told me about the time he asked a client why he still fabricated 70-µm test pads and 120-µm saw streets on his 300-mm wafers. “We’ve always done it that way,” was the reply. Sadly shaking his head in recollection my companion said, “This is the first time I’ve run into ‘legacy’ saw streets and pads. It didn’t matter that he was wasting enormous amounts of silicon—it was an unquestioned Sacred Tradition.”

It struck me later that we’re surrounded by these misnamed traditions. For me, “tradition” has always meant doing things in the grand way of one’s forefathers, not in the same way. Yet, if you really look around you’ll see that we’re trapped by an infinity of set-in-concrete attitudes that exist for no other reason than, “that’s how it’s always been done.” We rarely notice these multiple absurdities surrounding us because they’ve always been with us—like most familiar things they go unquestioned.

Take writing, for instance. Whether you call it “typing,” “word processing” or “texting,” the fact remains that there’s something unholy about its interface’s arrangement; i.e., the keyboard. The familiar—traditional—QWERTY keyboard first made its appearance in 1872. Christopher L Sholes, the inventor of the writing machine, had come up with an earlier version of his “Type-Writer” that wasn’t exactly successful. Its keyboard was arranged alphabetically, and the typebars (the metal rods with the letter on the striking tip) tended to stick together when some combinations were rapidly typed—the “T” and “H,” for example, when writing “the” or “although.” Sholes studied common letter pairs and rearranged the alphabet, ensuring that the most used letters were well separated on his new keyboard.

The Sholes typewriter was manufactured by Remington, the arms maker and, when it finally entered the mass market, the public didn’t consider the keyboard arrangement peculiar, because it was the first time the vast majority had ever seen a typewriter. (A piece of trivia: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was the first novel ever written on a typewriter. Mark Twain was an early adopter of the time-honored hunt-and-peck method.)



Three generations of writing devices--all of them QWERTYied!

Since then, whether typewriter, laptop, or Blackberry, the QWERTY keyboard hangs on, pointlessly and persistently, like I Love Lucy reruns and the vermiform appendix, impervious to better arrangements.

Now, let’s consider railroad tracks.

In the United States the standard railroad gauge is 4 feet, 8.5 inches wide. Why the weird width? Why not four or five feet—even?

At first glance, the answer seems simple. That was the track separation used in England, and railroad technology was imported here from there. Traditional, logical. End of query.

But why did the English use that railway gauge to begin with? Because the first British rail lines were built by workers using the same jigs and tools they used for manufacturing wagons and wagons had that wheel spacing.

That wheel spacing was not only traditional but practical. The wheels had to comfortably fit into the ruts on most of the long-distance roads in the British Isles; otherwise the ruts would wreck them. These old roads were built by Imperial Rome there—and across most of Europe—when Londinium was but another muddy stop in one of the Empire’s backwater possessions.



The Roman war chariot and horses--the multi-millenary standard.

Rome built these roads to enable her armies to move from one Empire trouble spot to another in a minimum of time. They were sized not only for troops but also chariots. The average two-horsepower Roman war chariot had its wheel spacing determined by the width of two equine rumps placed side by side. As centuries passed, their wheels wore deep ruts into the roads.



Ruts on a Roman road, carved by war chariots and centuries of wagon traffic.

The rutted road system survived well after the Empire’s end and anyone making a wheeled vehicle still had to ensure that the wheel spacing fit the Imperial ruts. This was one of the first instances (albeit unintended) of standardization, reaching across the centuries to the railroad age and past it.

Washington can derive great comfort from this; it proves bureaucracies are immortal.

But let’s go a step further.

There probably are few more magnificent sights than the Space Shuttle majestically rising from her launch pad, engines and boosters at their fierce maximum, their flaming throats roaring with raw power as they propel her into space!



The Space Shuttle--a bit of Imperial Rome in space. (NASA)

You’ve probably noticed that the main fuel tank has two enormous rockets attached on either side. These solid rocket boosters (SRBs) are manufactured in Willard, Utah by Morton Thiokol. Originally, the SRBs were designed to be larger; however, they had to be shipped by railroad to the spaceport. Said line goes through a mountain tunnel, and the SRBs had to fit through it.

The tunnel, of course, is only slightly wider than the railroad track, which is about the width of two horses’ rumps. Thus, a major design consideration for this ship of space was specced some 20 centuries ago, based on the size of a horse’s… well, you know.

You might think about this when you’re handed the specs for your next project.

Posted by Alexander E. Braun on July 23, 2008 | Comments (12)