How Long Is a Smoot?

It’s as long as a smoot stick!

Photo by “Beyond My Ken”. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic licence

On a day in October 1958, a group of students at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts had a bright idea.

They decided to measure the entire length of the Harvard Bridge, which spans the Charles River between Boston and Cambridge, by using an unusual method.