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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 saying 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. They 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).