Quote:
Originally Posted by stulk75
Five feet. 60 inches or 15 hands .896 Smoots.or .833 fathoms. It’s really big.
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A smoot is the length of one 18 year old, first year student, at MIT, Oliver R. Smoot [in October of 1958]; which translates to five feet seven inches, exactly.
The smoot was created in 1958, when Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity members at MIT decided to use a pledge, Oliver R. Smoot, Jr., to calculate the length of the
Massachusetts Avenue Bridge.
Smoot lay down on the bridge, his fraternity brothers marked his
head, and feet, then he moved down one length; and the process was repeated until the entire length of the bridge had been measured.
The fraternity painted markings every ten smoots. The length of the bridge was calculated at 364.4 smoots, plus one ear.
Succeeding pledge
classes repainted the markings; and it is a tradition that continues to this day. When the bridge was rehabbed, in the 1980s, the sidewalks were sized in smoot-lengths, or 5'7", instead of the normal 6'.
Smoot retired as chairman of the board of the American National Standards Institute, and President of the International Organization for Standardization.
I applied to every
single college fraternity; but, I was refused
membership in all of them, because I was circumcised.
Apparently, they only accept complete dicks.