24 hours, 56
minutes
Though the MIT group
led by Peter Samson was inspired by the "Flushing Youth"
Jerome Moses, the record they were trying to break was 24 hours and 56 minutes, set by Geoffrey Arnold
in 1963. 1
After their run, the
MIT group was questioned by reporters as to why they didn't do as
well as Geoffrey Arnold. They didn't know because they never
heard of him and weren't certain as to the rules he followed and
how their runs actually compared.
After their run,
Peter Samson tracked down Geoffrey Arnold, then a student at
Harvard, and with his encouragement Dick Gruen and Samson
developed a set of rules which Samson then prevailed upon the
Transit Authority to take as gospel. 2
These rules
developed by what they called the Amateur New York Subway Riding
Committee, delineated three different categories of record
attempts:
Class A - Covering all Lines
Class B - Touching all Stations
Class C - Passing all Stations
(1) from
the Atari
Archives
(2) from
the Amateur
New York Subway Riding Committee
