MITPressLog

"SMOOT POINTS"

MIT's Great Dome and professors aren't the only victims of famous hacks. Hackers like to fool around with measurement every now and then, too. Here's the tale of the legendary "Smoot," excerpted from Nightwork:

 

 

The greatest measurement hack of all time is indisputably the Smoot –named for Oliver Smoot, the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity pledge used to recalculate the length of the Harvard Bridge in 1958. It seems that Lambda Chi fraternity brother Tom O’Connor got it into his head to give his new pledges a chance to do public service. He figured that in making the long trek across the bridge from Boston, where the fraternity was located, some indicator of progress would be helpful when frat brothers held their heads down against the rain, sleet, snow, and gale force winds they sometimes encountered en route.

 Smoot, at just under 5’7” was the shortest pledge among the freshman at hand and was thus elected to be the human yardstick. Using swimming-pool paint on the bridge sidewalk, the pledges marked every Smoot with a colorful tick mark and at every 10 Smoots spelled out the full measurement. Eventually, they reached the end of the bridge–at 364.4 Smoots, plus or minus one ear.

Every two years, Lambda Chi pledges repaint the markings, which Cambridge police officers have come to rely on for specifying exact locations when filling out accident reports. After graduating from MIT in 1962, Smoot attended Georgetown University Law School. The man who is perhaps the most famous human-based measure of the twentieth century served as chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and president of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). By some serendipitous twist, the progeny of both Smoot and O’Connor enrolled at MIT’s Sloan School of Management forty years later.

The Alumni Association marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Smooting of the bridge in grand style: the City of Cambridge declared October 4 to be Smoot Day and the Institute dedicated a special plaque to commemorate the occasion. The MIT students who designed the plaque also created a Smoot stick, a permanent tool that will serve as the standard Smoot measure far into the future for MIT students who want to ensure the accuracy of the length of the Harvard Bridge. 

 

"Why sleep through a class when you can hack it?"

Here's some more fun from Nightwork as we get closer to April Fools' Day. This excerpt outlines a few entertaining classroom "hacks" that students have pulled at MIT, starting in 1870:

 

 

 

Snappy Assembly, Circa 1870
Pranksters sprinkled iodide of nitrogen, a mild contact-explosive, on the drill room floor, lending snap, crackle, and pop to routine assembly.

 

Progression of Tardies, 1927
Although vowing that he would never shut the door in a student's face, a professor religiously locked the classroom at five minutes past the hour to discourage late arrivals. One day, students waited until five minutes after the bell, then trickled into the room at carefully spaced intervals so the professor could never close the door--at least not for another twenty-five minutes.

 

Casual Saturday, 1949
Students arrived at their early Saturday-morning class in robes and pajamas to protest the cruel and unusual scheduling.

 

Exam A La Carte, 1978
A student threw a red checkered tablecloth over his exam table; set out three bottles of wine, corkscrew, glass, a plate of bread and cheese, and regulation No. 2 pencils before settling in for the test.

 

Reversal, 1982
Industrious hackers reversed all 199 seats in the 2--190 lecture hall so that they faced the back of the room. The prank was all the more ambitious because the seats are bolted to the floor.

 

Paper Airplane Assignment, 1985
Students picked up the usual stack of handouts as they entered the lecture hall, only to find that one was a hack. The sheet gave detailed instructions for making a paper airplane and when to launch it at the lecturer.

 

Turbojet, 1987
Hackers moved the massive turbojet on display in another building to the front of AeroAstro's unified engineering class. On the lecture hall blackboard, they asked, "Can you say Turbojet?"

 

Giant Clack Balls, 1988
One morning, students and faculty arrived in one of the principal campus lecture halls to find an enormous collision ball apparatus suspended at the front of the classroom.

 

Chalkboard Gremlins, 1981 and 1992
Using a handmade radio-controlled device, a hacker raised and lowered the lecture hall chalkboards to the frustration of the lecturer in the 10--250 lecture hall.

 

6.001 Spellbook, 1992
In a spoof on fantasy role-playing incantations, hackers distributed a "spellbook" to students that explained why some of their computer programming projects may go awry. 

Monday Eye Candy: Nightwork

April Fools' Day is fast-approaching, so we've picked a few images of MIT "hacks" from Nightwork: A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT (updated edition) by Institute Historian T.F. Peterson to inspire you. According to T.F. Peterson, "The word 'hack' at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and 'ethical' prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!). Note that this has nothing to do with computer (or phone) hacking (which we call 'cracking')." Be sure to check back throughout this week as we celebrate famous MIT pranks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Originally built for the Franco-Prussian war, the Caltech cannon has never fired a shot in anger, with the possible rumored exception of potshots toward Caltech's student housing office. In the late '60s, the cannon was "decorating" the campus of a private high school near Caltech, when Fleming House students chopped its wheels out of concrete and swiped it. After a back-and-forth, the cannon ended up permanently at Caltech, except for a brief abduction in 1986 by Harvey Mudd College pranksters and its legendary 2006 cross-country jaunt to MIT.

 

 

 

On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, hackers paid unusual tribute to the heroic firefighters of the NYFD. The logo painted on the truck, Meminimus, translates to "We remember," 2006.

 

 

 

Solar-powered MBTA Red Line cars on Dome, 2009.

 

 

 

 

John Harvard revealed as Halo 3 hero by MIT hackers the night prior to the video game's release, 2007.

 

 

 

 

"Portrait" of hackers just before completing their work, 1987. Tech Dinghy floats in Alumni Pool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hackers create a smiling jack-o'-lantern on the Green Building for Halloween, 1975.

 

 

 

 

The symbol from the popular movie Jurassic Park shines down from the ceiling of the Lobby 7, 1994.

 

 

 

Almost fully inflated MIT Balloon at the 1982 Harvard-Yale football game.

Gift Books

We asked MIT Press staff to tell us which MIT Press titles they'd suggest as gifts. Here are a few of their picks (more to come next Friday, 12/16):

 

 

Kelley, Sales

"Urban Code (by Anne Mikoleit and Moritz Pürckhauer) would be a great gift for your urbanite friends. It is hip, smart, and easily back-pocketable. Plus you don’t even need a bookmark as it comes with its own! Can’t beat a two-for-one!"

 

 

 

Emily, Acquisitions

"Something for Nothing (by Michael Klein) is a great gift for that grad student or young professor on your list. The novel chronicles David Fox’s first year as a visiting assistant professor of economics in small-town upstate New York. The central dilemma involves David’s decision to publish a paper with a right-wing think tank, but the rest of the story covers his attempts to find a tenure-track job while balancing teaching, research, and a social life. The details will ring true for anyone in academia and, best of all, this book is funny!"

 

Ellen, Director's office

"The Metamorphosis of Plants (by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; photographs and introduction by Gordon L. Miller). The illustrations that Goethe would have wanted! One gardener in the MIT community to whom I gave the book called it 'a treat for the eyes and the soul.'"  

 

Patricia, Sales

"I like the little books-– A Hut of One’s Own (by Ann Cline); Le Corbusier’s Hands (by André Wogenscky); A Day with Picasso (by Billy Kluver); Eccentric Spaces (by Robert Harbison).

And always a fan of Henk Tennekes, The Simple Science of Flight.

The Metamorphosis of Plants is just lovely, it’s been a favorite on display at St. John’s College Bookstore in Santa Fe."

Mens et Mania Recording Series: Week Eight

Today's recording concludes the eight-week series of readings from Mens et Mania: The MIT Nobody Knows by Samuel Jay Keyser. To top off the series, we are excited to offer a 15 percent discount on Mens et Mania to our blog readers (when purchased through The MIT Press website). Follow this link, which will automatically apply the discount, to access the complete set of recordings and to get your copy of the book just in time for the holidays. *In the (unlikely) event that the discount doesn't appear when you click the link, have no fear--simply manually enter the discount code "keyserblog11" in the shopping cart to get the discount.*.

Last week, Samuel Jay Keyser discussed MIT's hacking culture. In this final recording, Jay reads a bit more from Chapter 8: Hacking and answers questions about the power of judgment at MIT.

 

 

CH. 8.Hacking2

 

 

Did you ever see ways that this faculty judgment existed within the faculty as well, putting similar pressure on faculty members to constantly be the best of the best?

I think that excellence is the driving force at MIT. Its faculty feels guilty if it is not moving intellectual mountains. Look at me. I am 76 years old. I’ve been officially retired since 1998 and I have an article coming out in a professional journal this fall. Why do I bother with that? Why don’t I just say, “Enough is enough?” I think the reason is that I feel compelled to continue to command the respect of my colleagues as long as I possibly can.

 

Do you think it makes the faculty’s job more difficult or easier, knowing that they have this vital power of judgment?

I don’t think it is a question of difficult or easy. It is what you are supposed to do as a faculty member.  You have to teach and then assess each student on how well that student has managed to learn. Not to do that is not doing your job.

 

Mens et Mania Recording Series: Week Seven

Last week, Samuel Jay Keyser detailed his experiences as Housemaster of MIT's Senior House and read from Chapter 6 of his book, Mens et Mania. This week, Jay reads from Chapter 8: Hacking and answers a few questions below about MIT's hacking culture.

 

 

 

 

CH. 8.Hacking1

 

 

Can you give us another hacking example that you would have mentioned during your talk when you took a “walk down hack-memory lane”?

Two of the students who planted the explosives under the football field of the Harvard/Yale game that would have carved the initials MIT into the surface had they gone off successfully came to visit me once. They were amused that the Cambridge Police made such a to-do about it. Local newspapers claimed the explosives would have cratered the field. In fact, the primer cord used would have left little more than a turf burn. As it happened, one of the perpetrators was a demolition expert who had learned his trade in the Army. Yielding to pressure, MIT suspended the perps for a year. I asked them if they were unhappy about that. They said, “Hell, no. We went to Alaska, got good jobs planting explosives and came back the next year with money in our pockets.”

From your excerpt about the masked woman, it seems that receiving acknowledgement for the efforts put into hacking was almost more satisfying to the students than the hack itself. Is this the notion you got from your experiences with hacking, and if not, what did you find were the students’ motivations for hacking?

I think the students took pride in creating an elegant hack, one that was hard to execute, intellectually clever, and did not damage. But the underlying motivation, as I tried to argue, was to bring the Institute down a peg or two so that its judgments of their abilities didn’t hurt as much.

 

Mens et Mania Recording Series: Week Six

Last week, Samuel Jay Keyser talked about student conflict and read from Chapter 13 of his book, Mens et Mania. This week, Jay reads from Chapter 6: Housemaster, in which he details his experiences as the housemaster of MIT's Senior House. An excerpt from this chapter follows the recording.

 

 

CH. 6. Housemaster

 

I became housemaster of Senior House in 1981. Constantine Simonides was the one who offered me the job. Constantine later became a very close friend and advisor. You might not have predicted that if you had been a fly on the wall when he offered me the job. To put it bluntly, when I became housemaster at Senior House, the dormitory was functioning as a storm drain for the other MIT living groups. All of the difficult students were funneled there. These were students incapable of living harmoniously in the more normal dorms. These were the students who snatched fire extinguishers off the walls and ran down the corridors spraying their housemates' doors...

The position is a live-in arrangement, with the housemaster having an apartment located in the dormitory itself. My then wife, Margaret, and I had been residents for less than a week when we were visited by the house president. I remember what he looked like. He had the puffy look of an MIT anti-nerd, someone who worked very hard at his studies, didn't get enough sleep, ate too much pizza, and drank too much beer on the weekends. He had adopted the practiced mien of a hard-bitten leader of the working classes, namely, his fellow antinerds in Senior House. He had thick, black hair and a swarthy complexion. When he came into my apartment, I felt as if I were being boarded by a pirate.

After a few pleasantries--basically an exchange of names--he came straight to the point.

"Your job as housemaster," he said, "is to stay in this apartment and mind your own business. We'll let you know when we need your help."

"We?" I asked.

"The grease," he said. "The house grease."

This was the name for the Senior House government, all elected grease.

"What kind of help?" I asked.

"We may need you to run interference for us with them," and he jerked his head in a direction that I took to mean the rest of MIT. (This incident helped me begin to understand the role of hacking at MIT, but I'll save that for later as well.)

"I'll do my best to be fair," I said.

He gave me an odd look as if to say, "What the hell has that got to do with it?"

 

Mens et Mania Recording Series: Week Five

Last week, Samuel Jay Keyser discussed MIT's parenting responsibility. This week, he reads from Chapter 13 of Mens et Mania and comments on it below.

 

 

 

 

 

CH. 13.After the Aftermath

Even while apartheid “took a backseat,” was there a sense of unease that it would suddenly flare up again? What were your experiences and feelings during this time?

In a nutshell it was waiting for the shoe to drop. Many students needed conflict in order to mature. If there was no obvious conflict on the horizon, then one would have to be conjured up. Unfortunately, a university is an easy place to conjure up conflict. It is also a relatively unthreatening place to conjure up conflict, compared, say, to the world outside the so-called walls of ivy.

Mens et Mania Recording Series: Week Four

Last week, Samuel Jay Keyser shared his views on free speech at MIT. This week, Jay reads from Chapter 10 of Mens et Mania and answers a few questions about it below.

 

 

 

 

CH. 10.Don't Tell Me What To Do

 

What role, if any, do you feel you played in MIT’s parenting responsibility?

It is certainly true that MIT has a “parenting responsibility.” That responsibility is self-imposed, by the way. After all, MIT could have organized itself far differently with students living off campus and fending for their personal needs--lodging, food, medical, transportation, safety, etc.--on their own. But it didn’t.

I suppose, then, that in the eyes of the students I was a surrogate parent. I didn’t mean to be. Nor did I want to be. And, whenever possible, I tried not to be. But the nature of the place forces students, faculty and administration into certain roles. Those roles change as the culture changes, but in the 1980’s, it is very likely that I was seen as “surrogate parent” and the students that I had to contend with saw themselves as trying to free themselves from parental authority.

Was this notion of “Don’t tell me what to do” shocking to you or the general faculty in contrast to the students’ intellectual maturity in the classroom, or do you believe this aggressive attitude was displayed in the classroom as well?

“Don’t tell me what to do” had no place in an MIT classroom. It was, in my opinion, a reaction to what went on there. The students were highly constrained by the curriculum. The teachers were world-class researchers. They knew their subjects cold. The students didn’t. That’s what they were there, to match insofar as possible the expertise of their teachers. That is not an easy thing to do. “Don’t tell me what to do,” then, was the driving principle behind everything that was non-academic, the dorm, the dining room, the extracurricular activities like pornography and steer roast. It was a reaction to the pressure of the classroom. Hacking is a more creative and benign form of “Don’t Tell Me What to Do.”

Mens et Mania Recording Series: Week Three

Last week, Samuel Jay Keyser discussed the “adolescent science of linguistics.” This week, Jay reads from Chapter 7 of Mens et Mania and answers a few questions about it below.

 

 

 

 

From Ch. 7. Pornography&Free Speech

What were your thoughts about this controversy at the time it was unraveling?

 

I don’t think it was an accident that pornography became an issue at a time when the number of women on campus was doubling.  I think there was an element of sending women a message about their place in the scheme of things lurking behind the defense of a principle. One still hears women confronted with the view that they made it into MIT because of their gender and not their innate abilities.  In any event what troubled me most was the inability of one segment of the campus to be able to empathize with how pornography made another segment feel.

Have your opinions about this matter changed at all in retrospect?

No.

What do you think the importance of this incident was, in terms of what the students got out of it compared to the faculty?

For one thing the student-run Lecture Series Committee (LSC) no longer shows a pornographic movie on Registration Day.  That is a great step forward in civilizing our community. I have no doubt that pornography is still shown/viewed in more private settings.  But at least it is no longer a part of the “welcoming” ritual of MIT freshmen.

As for the faculty, I doubt many of them were very much aware of the turmoil that the issue had created on campus.  They were, as they so often are, focused on their research and teaching to the exclusion of issues of community culture.  I wouldn’t be surprised if much of the faculty had no idea that a pornographic movie was part of the Registration Day ritual at MIT.

Do you think that over the course of years, matters like these are necessary for the progress of both institutions and student populations? 

I think that confronting bad behavior is always a good thing to do.  I am not in favor of “doing” anything to students who behave badly, but I am in favor of holding up a mirror to what they are doing.  The same goes, of course, for the faculty.