So America is probably the last country making primary use of something other than the metric system. From my scant knowledge of the subject, I seem to recall that a foot as we know it was the length of a British King’s foot (you’d think that with my British heritage I’d know/care more about British history).

In 1962, the Smoot

was invented at MIT. Now, when I hear MIT I think cutting edge, precise, creative science and scientific discovery at it’s best. In 1962, a bunch of the geeks that were supposed to help build the brand of MIT helped perpetuate obscure measurement systems by coming up with the Smoot (which is really 5’ 7", or 170.16984000000002 centimeters). The Smoot is used to measure the amount of Smoots on a particularly long bridge (365 Smoots plus an ear in total). Shame on these geeks for not promoting the simple metric system. Shame indeed.