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MIT jugglers claim history, technology

By Arthur Lewbel Boston, MA

In April of 1976, a half-dozen jugglers who were attending MIT Unicycle Club meetings decided to separate and form the MIT Juggling Club. We continued to meet at the same time and place as the uni's did, Sunday afternoon in front of the MIT Student Center.

Over six years later, we still meet at the same time and place as long as the weather is nice enough to suit our persnickety jugglers (not too hot, cold, sunny, rainy, or windy). Otherwise, we meet in the lobby of MIT's building 13.

This club was not the origin of juggling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, however. Earlier, MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory studied jugglers and juggling from the point of view of how people learn a skill. One student, Howard Austin, wrote his entire thesis on the subject. In part, he analyzed how jugglers build up sequences of reflexes in their hands, that are called on by the brain, much as a computer program receives information from the outside, and processes it by calling on prearranged subprograms.

Juggling at MIT often seems to get technical. Although the majority of our members are not associated with the school, the spirit of the place sometimes creeps in. For example, David leDoux, a past president, created decks of computer punch cards whose holes would appear to move in juggling patterns when you thumbed through the deck. Professor Halold Edgerton, inventor of the strobe light, has taken pictures of club swingers and jugglers under his lab's powerful strobes. The juggler featured in a recent book of Edgerton's photos is Skip King, a former MIT Juggling Club member.

Mathematics professor Claude Shannon, who recently appeared in JUGGLERS WORLD magazine, is from MIT. In addition to building juggling machines, he has done original research into the mathematics of juggling.

He notes, for example, that the geometry of standard juggling patterns are invariant under affine transformations, although the ability to stretch or distort patterns in this way is limited by physical conditions, such as necessary minimal relationships between the time objects spend in the air and the time spent in the hand. Moving away from toss juggling, MIT has produced machines that can balance a pole, and students here built what was once the world's largest yoyo.

All of this activity has little to do with the MIT Juggling Club, however. The club is just a center for jugglers in the Boston area to meet, practice, trade ideas, and talk to each other, away from Harvard Square and the street scene.

We have no dues, one functional officer, and require no affiliation with MIT for membership. In fact, we don't even have a membership list. By always meeting at the same time and place, the club is available to any juggler with a Sunday afternoon to spare.

The meetings have a small core of avid regular attendees, and a hoard of every-nowand-then'ers. Attendance varies greatly from week to week. The range of ability in our members is also large. A few local performers, such as Rawd Holbrook of the Fantasy Jugglers, AI Jacobs, Michael Kass, Judy Gaiten, Dario Pittore show up most weeks. Some of our nonperformers are also very good, including some high-quality club passers like Eric Roberts, Rich Dingman, Steve Berlin, Sandy Brown, Carey Bunks and Laura Yedwab. There are numbers jugglers also, like Bill Kerr, Barry Rosenberg and Art Lewbel, all of whom juggle seven balls. The founder of the MIT Unicycle Club, Andy Rubel, comes by to juggle now that the unicyclists no longer meet.

At our meetings, we of course juggle and talk about juggling. Club passing is popular here. Fads, from counting three ball variations to fire eating, have come and gone, though year after year the club remains essentially unchanged.

How did all this come about? For me, it began in the spring of 1973 when, after two years of juggling on my own, I met John Grimaldi. He told me about the IJA, and about his juggling workshop at Trinity Church in Manhattan. When I came to MIT, I joined the unicycle club, and began bringing my juggling props to meetings. Some of the other unicyclists learned to juggle, and other jugglers seemed to drift in from nowhere. We soon started our own juggling club, modeled on John's New York workshop.

I was elected the first president, and David Mark (Spiderman the Juggler) was vice president. Among other things, David ran the first and only MIT juggling and unicycle club show.

Back then, club members were almost entirely MIT students. As we became more established, the club started attracting outsiders.

We ran a few New England Juggling get-togethers which, thanks to the publicity available through the IJA, attracted large crowds.

The press has also been helpful. Pictures or articles about the MIT Club have appeared in most of the local papers, including' 'The Boston Globe," "The Boston Phoenix," and the nowdefunct "Real Paper." "Fortune" magazine did a story on juggling that featured photos of the MIT club. "The New York Times" wrote an article specifically on the MIT Juggling Club, including photos. The article was syndicated, resulting in phone calls from friends in obscure places who read about the club in their local papers.

Overall, the MIT Juggling Club has had an easy and enjoyable life. Despite evictions and broken windows, we've kept juggling. If you're ever passing through the Boston area, please drop in (puns intended!). For further information, call me. Our club has been going for a long time, and it won't be dropped any time soon.