Golly. However did we end up with a standardised rail gauge, standardised mains voltages, standardised car tyre sizes, standardised film sizes, all before the EU was even a spaffed out spurt in a communist's prison cell?
Oh no, *thats* not the problem. The problem is when its an Apple and all the pictures are NOT stored in the data fork, but in the resource forks that you just deleted,.,
The only real one of those is film size. That was determined in the USA and everybody else followed suit.
And that's only because it was the most commercially successful one. I can't see the same commercial pressure would have standardised phone charger sockets. Before thee EU intervened (if only diplomatically) the companies used proprietary chargers, gave you a new one with every phone, and no doubt hoped for tie-in for future purchases. Not a conclusive advantage of the EU, perhaps, but a pretty undeniable one. Like capped roaming charges.
Dont be silly. Raiulway gauge was determined in the UK and became world standard.
Mains voltage was determined in the UK as well by and large
TCP/IP is a worldwide standard DESPITE the EU, which wanted X protocols.
By and large there are very very good reasons for standardisation and it doesn't *need* imposing.
If it does its almost certainly a bad standard to create a commercial advantage.
Golly, we are scraping the barrel to find anything good to say about the EU today aren't we?
I had about 7 old nokias, none of which used the same charger when I threw them out. Couple that with another collection of phones insisting on a network unlock code and I threw 11 working phones out.
The most galling was a phone I had bought outright (for £10) that was locked to Orange. EE wanted £35 to unlock it to work on EE.
I've always wondered why, if film sizes were determined mainly by US, they are quoted in millimetres rather than fractions of an inch. I believe the French were pioneers in cine film as well in the early days. Maybe we should be thanking them for the sizes of film used. We'll draw a veil over the 9.5 mm format with the perforations down the middle of the film, partly intruding into the top and bottom of the frame ;-)
How was the *exact* value of standard gauge (4 ft 8/5 in or 1485 mm) determined? I've seen various suggestions that the *approximate* value was related to the width of a horse (or two horses side-by-side) that pulled very early horse-drawn coal trains. But why did they settle on 4 ft 8.5 in, rather than a rounder number such as 4 ft 6 in (ie 4.5 feet)? Was it a legacy of designing wheel spacing that was a round number in your preferred system of measurement and then easing the rail gauge to make it slightly wider, to avoid the flanges wearing the rails?
Spanish rail gauge was never 'standard', more like 5' 5" until they built a high speed line that conformed to 'standard' so French TGV trains could use spanish track.
Not in Spain, Russia and other places
That why Ireland - which was British at the time of the railways - has a different gauge
110v in USA & Japan - 220 was/is the norm in Europe. But yes, we sold 240v to the Empire.
It's the size of the chariot ruts in Pompeii
But did the US actually invent 35mm and 24 fps for movies? Or simply adopt an existing standard and because they very soon became the largest film maker, it became the world standard by default?
Magnetic audio tape speeds also confuse me. Since it was a German invention, why are the common tape speeds imperial?
We also know the Romans (sensible fellows) drove on the left, as the ruts were deeper going in compared to coming out ....
It never fails to prompt a smile when I see tyre sizes as a bastard mix of Imperial and Metric ...
a few years ago we were on a Spanish train that changed gauge mid-journey. New loco but the coaches went through a gauge changer.
One possibility is that road carriage wheels are measured from the outside edges and that was originally true for railway trucks, which started out as man pushed or horsedrawn Chaldrons, on flat rails with guide flanges beside or on the rails. Assuming that they chose the round figure of 5', when they later changed to flangeless rails and flanged wheels, they would probably have kept the same spacing. 5' would then translate to 4'8" to the inner edges for 2" wide railhead and indeed that was the gauge of the Stockton and Darlington line. Stephenson later added an extra 1/2" to provide more tolerance and freer running on curves. ISTR that 4'8-3/4" is used on higher speed lines these days - although many "standard gauge lines of the late 19th century were built up to 4'9" for freer running of stock. The gauge is not that important anyway, as the flanges are only to stop a train running off the track where there are discontinuities or unevenness and not for normal running. Railway wheels are very slightly conical and the train naturally centres itself on the rails, with the flanges running clear of the rails.
Another stretches right back to Roman times. In towns and cities, the roads were also the open drains/sewers, so to get from one side to the other they had stepping stones. Cart wheels needed to be a standard width apart to fit between the stones. The gaps in Pompeii match standard gauge railways.
Which means the gaps *everywhere* would have been the same. From Hadrians wall to Palestine.
I thought Japan used 100v, not 110v.
No one really knows. At a given point someone somewhere laid some track and it just got copied
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