History of Smoots

During my training walks I like to impart little bits of Boston trivia I've picked up along the way. Last year one of my walkers told me the history of "Smoots" as we crossed over the Mass Ave bridge. I usually only remember the highlights of the story and share it each time we walk over the bridge during our 18 mile walk. It's a fun bit of Boston lore, and now that I know we're crossing the Charles River at some point during the 3Day I wanted to look up the info so I would be ready to share it with whomever is around me on July 26th! Here's a picture of Smoot being measured for the first time!


Here's the official story I found online:

Oliver Smoot, MIT class of 1962, is retiring from his chairmanship of the American National Standards Institute. He lent his name, and not coincidentally also his height, to a unit of measurement which is now part of history.


As almost every MIT student knows, a smoot is a unit of length equal to five feet seven inches. Most students also know that the length of the Mass. Ave. bridge between MIT and Boston is precisely 364.4 smoots and one ear. (aimee addition - on the actual bridge it says 364.4 + 1 ear)


A fact that's not as widely known however, is what Smoot himself did after graduating from MIT. After receiving a law degree from Georgetown he went on to set high standards, quite literally as President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). He has also been included in Google Calculator. If you enter "10 feet in smoots" into Google, the calculator will tell you that 10 feet equals 1.79104478 smoots. Google also uses the Smoot as an optional unit of measure in Google Earth.


Why smoots?This unique unit of measurement was developed in October 1958, Smoot's freshman year, and is one of the more famous MIT hacks. It came about as a way to measure the length of the Mass. Ave. bridge, and gauge the distance between the Boston fraternities and main MIT campus on cold days. The pledgemaster for Smoot's fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha, used Smoot as a measure because he was the shortest, and because the name sounded "scientific," like "meter" or "watt." They laid him down, end over end, and painted the markings that still bear his name. The name and legend have endured renovations to the bridge, 47 years of Lambda Chi Alpha Pledges, who repaint the markings every year, and two additional Smoots (son Stephen '90 and daughter Sherry '99). Alas, Stephen was too tall to follow in his father's footsteps, and the smoots almost became history.


Smoot himself is not yet history, however, despite any rumors. In an interview with the Washington Post, Smoot recalled the the first time he went to an MIT gathering of undergraduates. "I introduced myself to this young man, and he said, 'Oh, I thought you were dead.' "