The standard gauge (also named the Stephenson gauge after George Stephenson, or normal gauge) is a widely-used track gauge. Approximately 60% of the world's existing railway lines are built to this gauge (see the list of countries that use the standard gauge). Except for Russia and Finland, all high-speed lines have been built to this gauge.
The distance between the inside edges of the rails of standard gauge track is usually called 1,435 mm but in the United States it is still called 4 ft 8½ in.
Read more about Standard Gauge: History, Road Vehicles, Installations
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“If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)