MIT Juggling Club

The MIT Juggling Club is the oldest "drop in" juggling club in continuous operation in the world. The club was started in March 1975 and merged with a unicycle club that started in 1973.  "Across the years," reports Stacy Kess in the Cambridge Day (2/18/23), the club has "attracted a cross-section of humanity: young, old, students, professors, people who changed the course of the world, artists, writers, performers and the juggling-curious":

[MIT alum Arthur Lewbel] said among the more famous drop-ins to the club have been mathematician Claude Shannon, an avid unicyclist who dabbled in juggling before attending the club. While with the MIT Juggling Club, he developed the first mathematical theorem of juggling: (F+D)H = (V+D)N, in which F equals how long a ball stays in the air; D equals how long a ball is held in a hand; H equals the number of hands; V equals how long a hand is empty; and N equals the number of balls being juggled. Basically, one side of the equation tracks how much time hands spend juggling balls; the other side tracks the time balls are juggled.

Father of high-speed photography Harold “Doc” Edgerton was another famous attendee of the club as an MIT professor. Though Edgerton didn’t participate, he would drop in to invite jugglers to his studio.