Original: Although Smoot attended MIT , he was not the same Smoot who was laid end to end to measure the Harvard Bridge between Cambridge and Boston ; this was his cousin Oliver R. Smoot , an MIT alumnus who later served as the chairman of the American National Standards Institute .
Simplified: Smoots cousin , Oliver R. Smoot , also studied at MIT ( Massachusetts Institute of Technology ) , and was made famous for the Smoot measurement of the Harvard Bridge between Cambridge and Boston .