Oliver R. Smoot

Oliver R. Smoot
Born (1940-08-24) August 24, 1940
Bexar County, Texas, US
EducationMassachusetts Institute of Technology (BS)
Georgetown University (JD)
OccupationsExpert witness, retired
Known forUnit of measurement known as a smoot
Height1 smoot

Oliver Reed Smoot, Jr. (born August 24, 1940) is a former chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) from 2001 to 2002 and president of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) from 2003 to 2004.

In 2011, American Heritage Dictionary admitted his decapitalized surname, smoot, meaning a distance of 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m), as one of the 10,000 new words added to their fifth edition. The term is named for Smoot from his undergraduate days when he was used as a unit of measurement on the Harvard Bridge at MIT during a fraternity pledge activity. The bridge measures 364.4 smoots.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.