Searching on google, I can't find a single explanation. Maybe its a misspell?! Found a reference to it in the following text taken from a Wired article.
It would also be an apt coda to the revolution in measurement fomented by the French Revolution. As it happens, the savants bungled their measurement of the planet, resulting in a platinum meter that was 0.2 millimeters shorter than the fractional distance from the North Pole to the equator. In part, this error in the meter was due to the mistaken assumption, widespread at the time, that Earth was a regular spheroid—an error that the savants’ efforts ultimately helped to corre
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