Feb 3, 2012

How Long is a Smoot

The smoot is a unit of length, defined as the height of Oliver R. Smoot, who became the president of the ISO. The unit is used to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge. In 1958 when Smoot was a Lambda Chi Alpha pledge at MIT (class of 1962), the bridge was measured to be 364.4 smoots, plus or minus one ear, using Smoot's body as a ruler. Oliver was 5 feet, 7 inches at that time. Google Earth and Google Calculator include the smoot as a unit of measurement. You have just been smitten by a smoot fact.