A smoot is a unit of distance (or "length", as physical scientists say) used for measuring the Harvard Bridge. It is named after an MIT fraternity pledge at Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, Oliver R. Smoot (class of 1962), who in October, 1958 was rolled head over heels by his fraternity brothers to measure the length of the bridge. The smoot is equal to his height (five feet and seven inches -- 1.70 m), and the bridge's length was measured to be "364.4 smoots and one ear". Everyone walking across the bridge today sees painted markings indicating how many smoots they are from the Boston-side river bank. The marks are repainted each year by the incoming pledge class of Lambda Chi Alpha. Markings typically appear every 10 smoots, but additional marks appear at other numbers in between. For example, the 70-smoot mark is omitted in favor of a mark for 69. The 182.2-smoot mark is accompanied by the words "Halfway to Hell" and an arrow pointing towards MIT. The markings have become well-accepted by the public, to the point that they are sometimes used by police to indicate the location of accidents along the bridge.

This was only the beginning of Smoot's career in standards and measurement; he later became Chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

See also

• Modulor

External links

• The Smoot as a unit of length
• The Smoot story, in Oliver Smoot's own words
• MIT Museum article (courtesy Internet Archive), with photos