Oliver Smoot was the shortest pledge in the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity [at M.I.T.] in 1958 when its members decided to lay him on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge. After discovering Smoot measured 5 feet 7, they marked the bridge in those increments, with an eventually exhausted Smoot getting up and down for each new measurement.
They soon determined the bridge was 364.4 Smoots long.
Today, Google.com's calculator function can convert any measurement into Smoots.
[From 'Smoot' measurement reaches new heights at MIT - Yahoo! News]
Smoot himself later became chairman of the American National Standards Institute.
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