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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