Saturday, April 21, 2012

Some things you just cannot make up.

Those of you familiar with the Boston\Cambridge area have seen the "smoot" markings on the Harvard Bridge, painted  on originally in October, 1958.*  The unit of measure was a Lambda Chi pledge, one Oliver R. Smoot (5' 7"), who went on to....

Head the American National Standards Institute and the International Standards Organization.

*The smoot markings have become so much a part of the local landscape that when the Harvard Bridge was renovated in the '80s the Cambridge Police requested that they be retained since they had become a useful tool for identifying accident sites.  The contractor complied, even scoring the concrete on the sidewalk in 5' 7" increments rather than the traditional six feet.


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