A Measure Of Things
The Smoot
There is a certain satisfaction to be gained in exactitude – knowing the precise size, length or speed of something. Having a common form of measurement also allows us to indulge in that endearing habit of comparing one thing with another. In this series we will be looking at some unusual forms of measurement, some useful, some just a little weird.
One of the strangest rituals prevalent at some of the more prestigious American universities is that of pledging where students have to undergo bizarre and sometimes sadistic initiation tests to join some fraternity or sorority or other, usually characterised by Greek letters. In the autumn of 1958 Oscar Smoot decided that he wanted to join the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The pledge master at the time, Tom O’Connor, set an unusual task for him to complete – to measure the Harvard Bridge using his body as a yardstick.
For those of you who don’t know Boston, the Harvard Bridge is the longest bridge over the Charles River and at the time of the pledge was a swing bridge. Its published length is 660 metres or 2,170 feet in old money. Young Oscar stood 5 feet seven inches tall in his socks. The easy solution would have been to divide the length of the bridge by the height of Smoot and, voila, you would have the answer. But to enter the fraternity, Oscar had to physically mark the bridge with the selected unit of measure.
One Thursday night in October 1958 Smoot and some fellow freshmen set out to accomplish the task. Being budding scientists, their idea was to get Smoot to lie down and mark the spot where the top of his head the soles of his feet lay with a piece of chalk. Having got the calibration of a Smoot they would then use a piece of string to establish how long the bridge was in their new unit of measure. What they hadn’t banked on was that someone from the fraternity was watching them and so they had to laboriously have Smoot lie down, mark the spot and repeat the procedure until they reached the other end. Lines were painted at intervals of 10 Smoots and by the time they had reached the other end, the count was 364.4 Smoots.
There are a number of curious things about this whole exercise. When the students originally reported the length of the bridge they wanted to ensure that they would not be accused of inaccuracy by adding the rider, plus or minus an ear, noting the ear with an epsilon, as you would expect of scientific types. Over time, as the story has been retold the minus has dropped out of use but originally it was a fudge factor, to show the in-built fallibility of measuring systems. The experience must have been life-changing for Oscar as he had a career in measurement, eventually joining the Board of the American National Standards Institute and became its Chairman.
The Smoot soon entered MIT mythology and students would repaint the 10 Smoot markers every year. When the bridge was rebuilt in the 1980s the pavements were cut using Smoot-sized slabs and markers were inset into them to prevent the MIT students having to maintain them. The traffic police routinely used the Smoot markings in their accident reports. And, perhaps, the ultimate accolade for the Smoot – it is recognised as a bona fide measurement in the Google Earth and Google calculators – just try it!
But the most curious thing is that if the bridge is 660 metres in length as is claimed, then it should be 387.825 Smoots. He must have had a bloody big ear is all I can say!
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: American National Standards Institute, Charles River, Harvard Bridge, Massachusetts Institute of technology, Oscar Smoot, plus or minus an ear, the smoot
