For example, in 1958 a Lambda Chi Alpha pledge, Oliver Reed Smoot, Jr., was used by his fraternity brothers to calibrate the Harvard Bridge connecting Boston and Cambridge. The length of the bridge, it turned out, measures 364.4 smoots plus one ear. When the bridge was resurfaced in 1987, the 10-smoot markings were redone in the newly paved sidewalk, and it is the job of fraternity pledges today to repaint them as needed.

At the 1982 Yale football game at Harvard, just before halftime, with both teams lined up for the snap, an object slowly came out of the turf nearby and inflated into a 5-foot-diameter balloon covered with large "MIT" logos. And almost predictably, on the morning of December 17, 2003, the 100th anniversary of the famous flight at Kitty Hawk, a model of the Wright brothers' aircraft appeared on top of the MIT dome.

The MIT football cheer also reflects the nerd pride of the Institute:

e to the u, du/dx, e to the udx

secant, tangent, cosine, sine

3.14159

integral, radical, u dv

slipstick, sliderule, MIT

There are many jokes about engineers, both deprecating and laudatory. Engineers, who've invented their share, love all of them and e-mail them to everyone. Here are a few favorites.

An engineer was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." He bent over, picked up the frog, and put it in his pocket. After a while the frog spoke up again and said, "Hey, didn't you hear me? If you kiss me I'll turn back into a beautiful princess." "I heard you. I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog—now that's cool."

One night a wife found her engineer husband standing over their baby's crib. Silently she watched him. As he stood looking down at the sleeping infant, she saw on his face a mixture of emotions: disbelief, doubt, delight, amazement, enchantment, skepticism. Touched by this unusual display and the deep emotions it aroused, with eyes glistening, she slipped her arm around her husband. "A penny for your thoughts." "It's amazing! I just can't see how anybody can make a crib like that to sell for only $46.50."

Q: When does a person decide to become an engineer?

A: When he realizes he doesn't have the charisma to be an undertaker.

Bill Gates' Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

The Better Mousetrap

Any engineer remotely worthy of the name also worries about every issue or problem encountered in his "other life"—off the job. In travel, vacations, play, or at home he tries to come up with some solution, some improvement to each problem, real or perceived.

For example, an engineer encountering a stopped escalator may have a fleeting thought about what it would take, when an escalator stops, to have the steps rearrange themselves so they were like a regular set of stairs with steps of equal height. But most of the time the engineer dwells at greater length on some problem encountered in his daily life—and almost always outside his area of expertise—until he comes up with a "solution."