Eclipsing spectroscopic binaries in the small magellanic cloud

We have conducted a programme to determine the fundamental parameters of a substantial number of eclipsing binaries of spectral types 0 and B in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), with the spectroscopic data from the two-degree-field (2dF) multi-object spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope, and the photometric data from the OGLE-II survey for eclipsing binaries in the SMC. We have determined masses, radii, temperatures, and luminosities for both components of 50 binaries, as well as direct distances to each binary. We find that 21 of the systems studied are in detached configurations, 28 are in semidetached post-mass-transfer states, and one is a contact binary. These data are used to test evolution models for single and binary stars, as well as providing an independent mean distance to the SMC of 60.6 +/- 1.0 kpc.