To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
X-Comment-To: DONALD PEDDER <jims_son AT jedi DOT apana DOT org DOT au>
References: <Pine DOT GSO DOT 4 DOT 21 DOT 0104080557410 DOT 2944-100000 AT jedi DOT apana DOT org DOT au>
Message-Id: <2.07b7.V7YB.GBFYZF@belous.munic.msk.su>
From: "Arkady V.Belousov" <ark AT belous DOT munic DOT msk DOT su>
Date: Sun,  8 Apr 2001 01:42:51 +0400 (MSD)
Organization: Locus
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Subject: Re: [off-topic] shutting down
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Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com

X-Comment-To: DONALD PEDDER

Hi!

8-сав-2001 06:07 jims_son AT jedi DOT apana DOT org DOT au (DONALD PEDDER) wrote to
opendos AT delorie DOT com:

>>      Does this mean in German used American's "billion" instead English'es
>> "milliard" for 10^9? For us billion mean 10^15 (AFAIR).
DP>    I know we're heading O/T, but it's nice to see that SOME people know
DP> that 1,000,000,000 isn't really a billion. :-)
DP>    In fact Arkady, it's 10^12 - 1,000,000,000,000 (what an American would
DP> call a trillion). After one thousand, each new number-name is the square
DP> of the one before. i.e. million 10^6, billion 10^12, trillion 10^24,
DP> etc. (although there are some special ones - like a centillion, which is
DP> one hundred zeroes).

     Unfortunately, I have no table of powers names at hand and not remeber
precise names for each, but this is not so. Below is a short form of table,
which I remember (and which found with brief books looking):

        10^-18, atto- (a; source Dutch)
        10^-15, femto- (f; source Dutch)
        10^-12, pico- (p; source Italianian)
        10^-9, nano- (n; source Latin)
        10^-6, micro- (mk, mu; source Latin)
        10^-3, milli- (m; source Latin)
        10^-2, santi- (c; source Latin)
        10^-1, deci- (d; source Latin)
        10^1, deca- (da; source Greek)
        10^2, hecto- (h; source Greek)
        10^3 (2^10), thousand, kilo- (k; source Greek)
        10^6 (2^20), million, mega- (M; source Greek)
        10^9 (2^30), milliard, giga- (G; source Greek)
        10^12 (2^40), trillion, tera- (T; source Greek)
        10^15 (2^50), quadrillion, peta- (P; source Greek)
        10^18 (2^60), quintillion, exa- (E; source Greek)
        ...
        10^63, vigintillion
        10^100, gugol

non-SI naming - USA
        10^9, billion

non-SI naming - German, Britany, France
        10^12, billion
        10^18, trillion
        10^24, quadrillion
        10^30, quintillion
        10^36, sextillion

Last prefixes peta- and exa- affirmed on XV General conference on measures
and weight (free translation from Russian, so don't accuse in wrong spelling
:) ) in 1975.

     In 1975 Congress of USA decise to accept SI metric system in the 10
years period, but up to now there used non-metric units like `inch', `foot',
`lb', `gallon', etc. More worser, American units differes from English:
English gallon=4.54 litre, American gallon=3.78 litre. Same for most other
units, including inch.

DP>    What Americans (and the media, god-bless their exaggerating
DP> hearts) call a billion is actually one thousand million.