Lambda Chi Alpha | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Smoots | Lambda Chi Alpha | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Harvard Bridge is an almost-half-mile span across the Charles River linking the MIT campus in Cambridge with Boston's Back Bay, where MIT was first located and where many of its fraternities are still housed. It is a windy and miserable walk in Boston's long winter. This article tells the story of how, in 1958, the bridge was measured by fraternity Lambda Chi Alpha in lengths of the shortest pledge, 5' 7" Oliver Smoot. The bridge is 364.4 smoots long, +/- one ear. The markings (every 10 smoots, plus a "Halfway to Hell" marker) are repainted each year by the fraternity and are used as locators by local law enforcement. Smoot went on to serve as chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the International Organization of Standards (ISO), possibly the only time in history that a unit of measure has overseen the standardization of units of measure.