And, just as coincidentally, “micro” comes from . . .
Prescient, those ancient Greeks were!
And while we’re at it, \Omega and \omicron, “Omega” and “omicron”, are literally “Big O” and “Little O”.
Not true: A microchip could very easily be a square one micromile on a side.
Or indeed: macro
Micro, macro, mini, mega are standard prefixes in everyday English for “small” or “big”. It’s pretty clear that the term microprocessor is using the term in the everyday sense.
Very interesting! Thank you! 
There was a chorus of "Oh!"s when our teacher in Greek class pointed that out to us. It’s funny that those words (mega and micron) could be hidden in the letter names with the addition of a single vowel.
BTW, for those whose may not have studied Ancient Greek, the big and small refer not to the size of the letter form, but to how long the sound is voiced.
I’m not sure I would buy either from a company that makes both.
Pah! About as sensible as a micro-fortnight or nano-acre. However both these actually have provenance.
Well, literally, they are “O Big” and “O Little.”
Right, so feet have nothing to do with it. And come to think of it, I don’t recall anyone calling them microchips in the over 35 years I worked in the field. That’s a press term.
I worked on high end processors which often bumped up against the limits of what were manufacturable. I have a wafer floating around here somewhere with unpackaged parts and they are hardly micro.
Back 30 years ago feature sizes could be expressed in micrometers, but now we’re down to nanometer.
If anyone was going to implant chips in newborn humans, the underside of the heel would possibly be one of the worst, least practical locations, given the stresses it will be continually subjected to, from the moment the infant starts walking.
Oh-oh! Math text with the $'s doesn’t quote cleanly. Someone tell @codinghorror !
(I envision that fixing this will indeed be a coding horror.)
You will be horrified to know I have an early Itanic in a lump of clear plastic. SGI handed them out when we bought a big machine from them. I have a MIPS R10000 and a few late Alpha processors as well. Rather dates when I was in the HPC game.
Also have the chipset from a 70’s era Sharp calculator. You can just about see the gates on that with the naked eye.
For many years I had a ball point pen with a chip floating in it. That is, the top of the pen had a cylinder filled with water and a chip was floating in it. Well, it wasn’t actually floating, but it was immersed in it and would move around if I tilted the pen. I think it was a Motorola 68000, but am not sure. The pen finally ran out of ink and I think I disposed of it.
The constant motion and use provides power for the transmitter.
Not horrified at all. I worked on Merced, the first Itanic, for 6 quarters where we made maybe 2 quarters worth of progress. We were nowhere close to silicon when I left. That was the only project I ever worked on which was a true and utter disaster.
I went from there to Sun which was in the process of kicking SGI’s butt, having bought the profitable part of Cray among other things. Most of my my wafers and silicon are various Sparcs.
Need pics
How does a pet’s microchip work? There’s no external antenna - nor is there a power source (unless it’s built into the chip; if so, what is its lifespan?).
Ignoring the size issue - something as tiny as mentioned early on would be unlikely to be reachable through any kind of reader, under more than a small amount of skin and flab, while a pet-sized microchip must manage the job - some kind of reader such as is passed over a dog or cat to check for a chip would presumably do the same for a human.
Just have these readers everywhere a human is likely to go. Sure, it’ll have to be something that can get close enough to a person to read the chip, but any time you go in or out of a public building chances are you get close enough to a doorway that the chip might be read. Just start installing readers at roughly shoulder height on both sides of every door in any public spaces. Airports are perfect - those security scanners could certainly be adapted to include a chip reader.
Pet chips do include an antenna, and the antenna is the limiting factor in how small they can be. And the reader doesn’t need to be walk-through-a-doorway close; it needs to be held right up against the skin.