Of Silicon Streets, Typewriters, and Horses' Rumps

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.