The length of the Harvard Bridge - "364, 4 distemper and one ear"

Troubles emerged at MIT in October 1958. The students decided to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge, which connects Boston and Cambridge, to know exactly how much is still left to go.

As a means of measuring the distance has been selected one of the students, Oliver Smoot. His height (about 1 m 70 cm) and was equal to one confusion.

The measurement procedure was as follows: Smoot went to the bridge, while his fellow students noted his length, and then he got up, crossed to the resulting spot and went back, measuring out one of her own growth. Every 10 Smoot marked with paint on the pavement. Coming soon, Oliver Smoot was tired, but the measurements continued, his body simply drag and drop to the new marks.

The total length of the bridge was "364, 4 distemper and one ear».

Every year, a mark on the bridge are updated by the Institute of freshmen. Usually every 10 mark are embarrassed, but there are non-multiple and mark them. So at a distance of 182, 2 Troubles (half the length of the bridge) is stamped with text «Halfway to Hell» («Halfway to Hell") and an arrow pointing to the Institute.

Marks 70 hesitate not, it missed the mark after 69, next to which there is an inscription «Heaven» («Paradise»).

After the reconstruction of the bridge in 1988 at the insistence of police Cambridge marks were restored. It turned out that the police is very convenient to focus on the bridge, with the help of the Troubles is easy to point to the exact location of the accident on the bridge.

As a small innovations were numbered all the troubles, not just multiples of 10. And now everyone can on marks to specify exactly how many hesitate passed him by Boston riverside.

Oliver Smoot then became president of the American National Standards Institute, and later headed the International Standards Organization.

Troubles calculator supported by Google. By entering 10 you can get hesitate to answer that 10 feet = 1, 79,104,478 hesitate. Google also allows you to use the turmoil as additional units in his software product Google Earth.

Source: ru.wikipedia.org

via factroom.ru