The 50th Anniversary Smoot Plaque was unveiled in a ceremony on the Cambridge side of the Harvard/MIT Bridge on Thursday June 4th. The installation of this plaque completed the 50th Anniversary celebration of the original marking of the bridge. 
 

Made of space age titanium metal, the plaque was designed by Ilan Moyer ’08 and Melissa Rothstein. Moyer machined the plaque in the MIT Hobby Shop with advice by Ken Stone '72, Director of the MIT Hobby Shop. The new titanium plaque will be placed in the same location as an original plaque which was installed in 1987. Like its predecessor, the new plaque is also a gift of the MIT Class of 1962.

Named for Oliver Smoot '62, a Smoot is a unit of length equal to approximately 66 and 11/16 inches.  In the fall of 1958, Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity’s pledgemaster Tom O'Connor '60 understood the need for some kind of measure to keep track of one's progress across the monotonous stretches of the Mass Ave. bridge.  Smoot was the shortest pledge with the most scientific sounding name, and therefore chosen as the unit of measurement. Using Smoot as a measure, seven Lambda Chi pledges marked out the entire bridge, carrying him part of the way. The bridge’s length was measured to be 364.4 Smoots, plus or minus one ear.

Asked about it later, Oliver Smoot reflected, “What I always come back to, is that you should always consider everything you do, because you never know what the long term effects of two hours spent on an October night in 1958 can have on your life.” Interestingly, Smoot went on to become the chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and president of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).  

The Smoot has since become a well-known unit all over the world and is even a measurement option on Google Calculator and Google Earth.

The markings have proved extraordinarily useful to bridge walkers over the years, and are meticulously maintained by the Lambda Chi brothers, who repaint them twice a year.

To learn more about the Smoot tradition, please visit http://web.mit.edu/smoot/.