 An actor has a Bacon number of one, for example, if he or she appeared in the same film with Bacon. Someone who appeared in a film with another actor who appeared in a film with Bacon has a Bacon number of two, and so on. The average Bacon number is 2.95 among actors who have one. In that group, even the actor most distant from Bacon, William Rufus Shafter, has a Bacon number of only seven. Shafter, a Union Army officer during the Civil War, appeared in two films in 1898.