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I remember as a kid in the 60’s that most of the smokehouses around my part of Missouri had the firebox adjacent to the smoke chamber. You didn’t lose heat going inside the building to add fuel. It’s the same with an offset smoker.
I'm on my phone and can't figure out how to post a copied link, so do a search here on SMF for "History of the offset smoker." A thread has one answer that sounds feasible.