Kudos to NPR’s Benjamin Arthus and Robert Krulwich for their excellent recent piece “What’s A Smoot?” where they note that the local unit of measurement has been adopted as a worldwide standard by Google Earth:
A Smoot, of course, is the length of Oliver Smoot, an 18-year-old MIT student in October 1958, when he and some friends were ordered to measure the Harvard Bridge in body lengths as part of a frat pledge. (The Harvard Bridge — oh, irony — connects MIT and Boston). In 1987, according to NPR and journalist Warwick Cairns, “the Massachusetts Metropolitan District Commission (the folks in charge of the bridge) went on record in support of smoots. “We recognize the smoots’ role in local history. That’s not to mean that the agency encourages graffiti painting. But smoots aren’t just any kind of graffiti. They’re smoots!” [And so…] the Continental Construction Company of Cambridge paved the bridge with slabs that were five foot seven inches long (smoot length) instead of the usual six foot increments. Annual smoot painting continues to this day.” Smoot, in a further instance of magnificent irony, or justice, later became Chairman of the American National Standards Institute and President of the International Organization for Standardization.
Good work, Google.
I was told that there was an engineering contest between Harvard and MIT which a group of MIT students won. The prize was to be able to name the bridge. So the winners researched the bridge. They found it was structurally unsound, and decided that, of course, it should be named the Harvard Bridge.
… but MIT wasn’t anywhere near that bridge when it was built in the i890s. MIT was initially in Boston proper, around where the Hancock tower is now, and didn’t move to it’s present location until 1916.
The bridge, apparently, was structurally unsound and was all but rebuilt in the 1980s.
New England is the center of progressive politics. We have a sense of humor.
I used to walk across that bridge three days a week, year round. The “Half way to hell” mark is essential. It’s at that point where, despite being absolutely frigid, you know for sure that pressing on will get you off of that icicle faster than turning back.
Note that “half way to hell” is indifferent to unit of length.