I’m 29. I remember when I was a kid that a billion was certainly a million million, 10^12, an American trillion. An American billion was always called a ‘thousand million’
Nowadays a billion is always 10^9 just like the US standard, and has been for quite a while. The thing is though I can’t remember either any specific changeover or any period where the word billion was confusing. As far as as I can tell the change seemed to just slip through. Did I miss a memo? Was there either a specific change or a period of confusion that I slept through?
I’ve always understood that, insofar that there was an official change, it was Harold Wilson’s announcement in December 1974 that the Treasury would now adopt the US usage. Economic numbers are, after all, pretty much the only place (U.S.) billions routinely crop up in an everyday context.
I’m a decade older than you and I never remember there being much confusion over the meaning. I knew there were the two definitions, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the old one actually used except in an obviously dated text. Perhaps you had old-fashioned teachers?
>I never remember there being much confusion over the meaning.
Gee, I didn’t know the UK had switched. Over the years I’ve certainly had to say “ten to the nine” to clarify which one I meant when asked, or by way of avoiding “billion” altogether. This has always been in a technical context.
Clearly there are still some people in Britain who never got the memo. But as bonzer says, anybody who has to use it in a professional context has been using 10[sup]9[/sup] for decades.
Odd - I was born in 1976 and I’m sure I was taught in primary school that a billion was a ‘million million’.
I wasn’t aware that we’d adopted the American way until I was at university.
I’m two years younger than Mr Shine, and I got told the ‘million million’ version at some point. Or read it. But then, our school did have old-fashioned teachers, and I have a penchant for finding outdated books in the dusty extremities of school shelves and cupboards.
Since when were primary school teachers authorities on number systems? I don’t think they cover the billion/trillion issue at teacher training college.
The old British pattern keeps (kept) on going, right? So an old trillion was a million old billion, or 10[sup]18[/sup]. And an old quadrillion would have been 10[sup]24[/sup].
To be honest, it really wouldn’t surprise me if there are still primary school teachers insisting that a billion is a million million. But that wouldn’t be particularly relevant to what definition people actually use or assume in everyday life.
We’ve done this general topic a few times. In one previous incarnation I asked “OK, the American billion was called a ‘milliard’ under the old British system. By logical extension, then, a thousand billion would have been a billiard? And a thousand trillion a trilliard?”
It was the consensus of the UK dopers that the only known billiard was played on a velvet-topped table with cue sticks, and no one had ever encountered a trilliard.
So the old British system wasn’t actually used for anything much beyond a million million (old British billion, US trillion). It seems to have consisted in its entirety of “millions, and then milliards for thousand millions, then billions for thousand milliards, and so on like that <vague gesture of hand towards infinite reaches>” and the “so on like that” remained strictly hypothetical. No one went there.
The US system probably took over because people actually used it for higher numbers. Quadrillions, sextillions, and the like. (Perhaps not as common as scientific notation or annoying phrases like “a thousand thousand billion”, but you would encounter them sometimes).
Btw. that’s only true in English. E.g. in German the long scale is used exclusively, including the terms for high numbers ending in “-iard” (well, technically “-iarde” in German.)
Yes, just like that. The terms ending in “-ion” are the same, just capitalized like all nouns in German. Those ending in “-iard” have an additional short unstressed “e” at the end. There is another minor difference but it doesn’t come up very often. In words derived from latin “c” is replaced with “z” or “k” depending on the context. This first occurs in “Oktillion” (10[sup]48[/sup]) and “Oktilliarde” and then again in “Dezillion”/“Dezilliarde”.
