How many Smoots long is the bridge?
By John Gregory
What in the world is a Smoot?
Read closely. It’s a real hoot!
It’s not a moose. It’s not a goose.
It’s not a word from Dr. Seuss.
A Smoot is a measurement based on the height of Scripps Ranch resident Oliver Smoot. While Smoot’s name might not ring a bell for most, he is a folk hero in the greater Boston area and on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). His actions on a cold autumn evening in 1958 almost rival the legend of Paul Revere. Well, not quite, but it’s a fun tale.
Smoot was one of the freshmen entering M.I.T. in the fall of 1958. He pledged Lambda Chi Alpha during fraternity rush. Each week the pledges participated in what was known as Wednesday Night in which they would describe what they did that week. Afterward, they would be assigned a task.
“In October, our pledge master said in the past week he had been late to class four times. The main reason for that (he said) was our fraternity house was in Boston, and M.I.T. is in Cambridge, and the two are connected by a bridge that is approximately ½ mile long called the Harvard Bridge,” Smoot explained. “So, he said, ‘You know when you get out to the middle of the bridge you really don’t have much idea how much longer you have to go before you get to the other side. So, let’s measure it.’”
The pledge master looked at the pledges in front of him and focused on Smoot, who was the shortest at 5-feet, 7-inches (67 inches).
“Go out and measure it in ‘Smoots’ and report back next week,” he said.
So, the next night, seven of the pledges gathered, grabbed some paint, chalk, string and a notepad, and went to the bridge.
“I laid down and they marked where my head was with chalk. I got up and put my toes there and laid down and they marked my head (again). After 10, we painted a big ‘10’ with a mark on the sidewalk,” Smoot said. “After 50, we painted ‘50’ and wrote ‘Smoots’ under it.”
But the process did not continue without unexpected challenges.
“At about 300 Smoots we were going along and a police car was going from Cambridge to Boston, so he was on the other side of the bridge. He made a U-turn and we ran,” Smoot said. “Luckily, it was a short
distance to the M.I.T. campus. We got there and we hid in some bushes. They came and they looked around a little bit, then they went back and got in their car and drove off. Of course, we were pretty scared.”
So, the process continued. They had measured and marked the distance of 10 Smoots with the string, intending to simply use that for the remaining measurements to simplify the process.
“At some point, a sophomore brother, who was basically clueless, joined us just to make sure we were doing this hilarious thing right,” Smoot said. “So, we never were able to use the string we had in our pocket to measure off 10 Smoots (at a time) … the easy way.”
Therefore, Smoot had to keep laying down for each measurement along the distance of the bridge.
“This continued for I don’t know how long, but I couldn’t get up anymore. So, then they started helping me stand up, and at some point I know they were carrying me from one mark to the next,” he said.
Amazingly the pledges completed their task before midnight. The Harvard Bridge is 2,032 feet long. That turns out to be 364.4 Smoot body lengths. Smoot and his accomplices added a meter because they figured they had made a slight error somewhere along the way.
They were able to report they accomplished their mission the next week, and were all initiated into the fraternity the following January. Most of the Smoot marks had faded away after that winter.
“So, the next fall, we told the new freshmen that they were to go out and repaint the Smoots,” Smoot said. “We thought that when our class graduated, this would all be abandoned. … But every (following) class … invested in painting these things.”
The Smoot markings are still being repainted every fall 66 years later, but it’s officially accepted and part of the M.I.T. folklore. The marks are now painted by M.I.T. alumni.
The Harvard Bridge was rebuilt in the late 1980s.
“Someone briefed the project engineer on the strange marks painted on the bridge,” Smoot said. “He liked the idea, so he made the expansion joints 67 inches apart (the length of a Smoot).”
During Smoot’s 25th reunion, a 4-foot pillar was erected on the M.I.T side of the bridge with a bronze plaque commemorating the Smoot measurement mission. But someone swiped the plaque within about two weeks. A titanium plaque with screws that are impossible to remove was attached to the pillar in 2008.
Following graduation from M.I.T., Smoot earned a law degree. But his career was in systems coding and computer privacy. He eventually became chairman of the board of the American National Standards Institute, and later became president of the Council of the International Organization of Standardization.
MEASURE THE BRIDGE: Smoot will be at the Scripps Ranch Friends of the Library (SRFOL) table during the semiannual book sale on Saturday, Aug. 24, from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Scripps Miramar Ranch Library. Visitors are encouraged to guess the length of the small bridge at nearby Evans Pond in Smoots. Submit your guess at the SRFOL table. All participants who match the same length in Smoots to the unofficial SRFOL measurement will win a prize.