Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Smoot" in English language version.
Specifically noting the bridge's length of 364.4 Smoots (+/− 1 ear), the plaque, a gift of the MIT Class of 1962, honors the prank's 50th anniversary.
... so they added the plus or minus, and wrote the e in ear as an epsilon. 'The epsilon referred in a cutesy way to this error measurement,' [Smoot] says. And therein lies another detail that has evolved over time: the epsilon has been lost from written accounts of the story, Smoot says, and the minus sign is often omitted as well.
