Smoot
Smoot :
A humorous unit of distance invented in 1958 by a fraternity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The fraternity pledges of Lambda Chi Alpha measured the length of Harvard Bridge using pledge Oliver R. Smoot ('62). According to Smoot himself, the bridge turned out to be 364.4 smoots long "plus epsilon," but this has been recorded as 364.4 smoots "plus an ear." The bridge is still marked in smoots. Proposals to change the definition of the unit by remeasuring it with Smoot's son Steve (MIT '89) or daughter Sherry ('99) were rebuffed. One smoot equals 67 inches (170.18 centimeters). Oliver Smoot became an attorney but continued his interest in standards and measurement. He is a past Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and he was President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 2003-04
