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As technologies emerge, evolve, mature and then decay, they sometimes create, in their wake, constraints that persist in contingent and unforeseen ways. Ideally, technical standards should be grounded in objective criteria that are ultimately derived from rational principles having a basis in either empirical phenomena, or in the axiomatic rules of mathematics. But the reality, of course, is always a little different whenever irrational homo sapiens is involved.

If the principle that “man is the measure of the universe” was seminal to the achievements of Renaissance thinkers and artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, then one might argue that “horse”, rather than “man”, was the defining measure for the pioneering engineers and entrepreneurs of the Industrial Age. And it was the emergence, acceptance and adoption of a new infrastructure based on that measure that created profound and pervasive disruption in transforming European and American society from its formerly agrarian basis to a newly industrialized one as the 19^th century progressed.

The plausibility of historical causality that underpins the following anecdote has certainly helped to give it longevity and wide circulation on the Internet. And although the story’s authenticity buckles when the facts on which its narrative runs are subjected to close scrutiny, like all good fiction--if that is truly what it is--it nevertheless conveys a compelling lesson in the law of unintended consequences that will resonate with all engineers, whether civil, software or electronics.

A tale: tall or true?

Conformance to the international railway gauge ensures that the rails forming the parallel tracks of any railway that is constructed and operated to this standard are always laid 1 meter, 35 centimeters (or 4 feet, 8.5 inches) apart. But it is not self-evident as to why 1 meter, 35 centimeters is functionally any better than, say, 1.5 meters on the metric scale or why 4 feet, 8.5 inches is any better than 4.5 feet on the imperial scale. So what is it that makes this specific measurement so intrinsic to the function of this gauge?

Standard gauge, as it is now commonly known, began to gain wide acceptance among railway builders after the passing of the Gauge Act by the British Parliament in 1846. However, it had been pioneered 16 years earlier by the English mechanical engineer George Stephenson for the operation of the Manchester and Liverpool Railway (M&LR).

One explanation as to why Stephenson selected this gauge is that it was a de facto standard with which he was already familiar from the horse-drawn railways at the collieries where he worked while perfecting his steam locomotives. The width of the parallel wooden tracks, along which the coal was hauled, was determined by the width of the coal wagon’s axle. This, in turn, had been influenced by the character of the roads along which the wagons traveled when not running on rails.

Many of the major highways connecting English cities at that time dated back to the Roman conquest and ran over roads the Romans had originally laid. These highways retained the imprint of their Roman template in the ruts that often emerged, incised into the original, underlying stone that paved these ancient roadways, which can still be seen today. Thus, the axle of a 19^th century wagon was calibrated so that it could safely navigate the ruts left by the action of 1^st century Romans wheels.

Roads were an integral part of the imperial command-and-control infrastructure, and were primarily constructed not for commerce but so that Roman legions could rapidly deploy to quell rebellion and unrest wherever it arose throughout the empire, such as among the tribes of ancient Northumbria, in the north of England, where Stephenson was born and worked. Hence, it was the dimensions of a Roman chariot--wide enough to accommodate the rumps of two horses--and the vestiges of its wheel tracks that gave rise to the standard measurement of the modern railway gauge.

Stuck in the ruts

I first came across this explanation in an e-mail from a technical compliance officer who had used it to make an exasperated point about the anarchy of incompatible protocols across the company’s IT infrastructure in the run-up to the millennium rollover. The punchline made crude and humorous reference to the fact that the protocols had been specified without regard for inter-operability and, like the basis for standard gauge, appeared to have originated from a horse’s behind.

Regardless of whether you accept the apparent causal connections that link the physical attributes of a Roman war horse to a contemporary railway gauge, the story implicates some persuasive explanations about how technological development, in general, appears to proceed.

Teleology drives technology; that is, technology is ends-driven. It is purposefully shaped to meet specific utilitarian needs. It’s an obvious point, but this characteristic is further refined by the requirement to meet immediate needs. The urgency to fashion a solution that will help solve a present problem is what counts in technology.

New technology may be cutting edge, but it always needs an edge to cut--right now--in order to realize its potential. Stephenson needed a gauge to operate a steam railway, so why not re-purpose a horse-drawn wagon gauge? Technical innovation thus arises pragmatically out of the moment--but sometimes by accident or haphazardly--to meet a present need. That today’s cutting edge can become tomorrow’s constraint is suggested by a further twist in the tale of Stephenson’s gauge.

To escape Earth’s gravity, NASA’s Space Shuttle must use two Solid Booster Rockets (SBRs), each capable of generating a thrust of 15.4 million horsepower. These SBRs are manufactured by U.S. company Thiokol and are transported from its Promontory, Utah facility to the Florida launch site where they are then assembled with other shuttle components. Weighing in at 192,000 lbs each (since the only way to transport these bulky SBRs over land is by rail), one could argue that in order to meet this requirement their design has been constrained by that of a Roman chariot.

Again, whether you accept the influence of such attenuated causal connections or not, the story speaks to our sense of purposeful continuity in technological development, that the transformative impact of technology derives from the facility with which solutions can be transferred and adapted across different technical domains. Further, that as new technologies emerge and evolve, they often shadow the tracks laid down by earlier, previous technologies.

From a business perspective, this story also implicates the argument for First Mover Advantage, that establishing dominance in an emergent technology can confer potential for greater market rewards than that available to later entrants. In Stephenson’s case--though not on the scale of Bill Gates in the field of PC software today--following the success of the M&LR, he did achieve financial success as the pre-eminent railway builder of his day.

Whether it’s a Roman chariot, a steam railway, or a space rocket, as new technologies emerge and gain acceptance the challenge is always to mediate the discontinuity of disruptive advantage that the new technology introduces with the continuity of methodological process that enables that advantage to be realized. Or, to put it another way, the successful adoption and assimilation of a new technology depends not so much on the nature of the technology itself but on how we move from ruts to rails. And the way we accomplish that today--if not always in the past--is through the practice of project management.

Raising ourselves out of the ruts and running on new rails is something of a real and present challenge in one of my current projects. In the next part of this article, I will look at how the project team is assimilating a new approach to product development, with the introduction of the Ruby on Rails (RoR) programming framework, and how project management practice is helping the team cope with the challenges that RoR has introduced.

The individual details of the tale of Stephenson’s gauge are, for the most part, factually true. However, the causal connections that link those details are dubious, as debunkers of the tale point out. As a story, it probably belongs more in the category of urban myth and legend than in that of the history of technology. But however you interpret it, Stephenson’s gauge illuminates some fundamental assumptions about how we view the evolution of technology. Ian Whittingham, PMP is a Program Manager at Reuters Insight. The views expressed by the author in this article are his own. You may contact the author directly at ian.whittingham@reuters.com.

Running on New Rails (Part 1)