the.com/billion
A thousand million — small enough to say fast, too big to actually picture.
means The number 1,000,000,000 — a thousand millions, or 10 followed by nine zeros.
from French coined it from 'million' by swapping in the prefix 'bi-' (two), so it literally meant 'a million to the second power' — a million millions, in the old long-scale system still used in parts of Europe. The short-scale version we mostly use now, where billion means a thousand million, took hold through French and English commercial and financial usage over the centuries, especially as American usage spread the short scale internationally. The number itself hasn't changed; which pile of zeros gets to wear the name has, depending on which side of a few historical conventions you stood.
- name split
- US billion is 1,000x smaller than old British billion
- seconds test
- a billion seconds is about 31.7 years
- counting time
- counting to a billion aloud takes roughly 100 years
- money reality
- a billion dollars in $100 bills weighs over 10 tons