How far is that in Smoots?

As of July 17, 2008 at 7:00 AM
Iggy-Steps: 4,006,333
Smoots: 1,588,649.95
Currently virtually in Walpole, MA


Map of Boston showing the Harvard Bridge
- in red and circled in green

The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length created as part of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot (class of 1962), an MIT fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha, who in October 1958 was used by his fraternity brothers to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge between Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts.


Oliver R. Smoot

One smoot is equal to his height (five feet and seven inches ~1.70 m), and the bridge's length was measured to be 364.4 smoots (620.1 m) plus or minus one ear.

Smoot repeatedly lay down on the bridge, let his companions mark his new position in chalk or paint, and then got up again. Eventually, he tired from all this exercise and was thereafter carried by the fraternity brothers to each new position.

Everyone walking across the bridge today sees painted markings indicating how many smoots there are from where the sidewalk begins on the Boston river bank. The marks are repainted each year by the incoming associate member class of Lambda Chi Alpha.


The 250 Smoot Mark

Markings typically appear every 10 smoots, but additional marks appear at other numbers in between. For example, the 70-smoot mark is omitted in favor of a mark for 69. The 182.2-smoot mark is accompanied by the words "Halfway to Hell" and an arrow pointing towards MIT. Each class also paints a special mark for their graduating year.

The markings have become well-accepted by the public, to the point that during the bridge renovations that occurred in the 1980s, the Cambridge Police department requested that the markings be maintained, since they had become useful for identifying the location of accidents on the bridge. The renovations went one better, by scoring the concrete surface of the sidewalk on the bridge at 5 feet and 7 inch intervals, instead of the conventional six feet.

In case you are wondering, Mr. Smoot went on to have a sucessful career in technical standards and measurements in Washington DC working for the Information Technology Industry Council and served for two years as the President of the International Organization for Standardization (I kid you not) and has just recently retired.