[ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon

[BillK]

On 5/24/09, Max More wrote:
>  BillK, you are being insufficiently culturally sensitive to us Brits and
> ex-Brits. :-) A British billion is a million million U.S., and a British
> trillion is a U.S. quintillion. I remember coming across this a number of
> times before, though I don't actually remember ever using the UK versions
> even before I left the Old Country in 1987. But I'm not just imagining it.


You are historically correct, but it's a one world crisis these days.

It would cause the Brit newspapers no end of confusion if they had to
quote Obama spending a trillion here and 2 trillion there, then go
into translation mode and explain about the differences between a UK
trillion and a US trillion.

They have just given up and use the US trillion meaning. :)

See Wikipedia:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales>
UK usage
    "Billion" has meant 10^9 in most sectors of official published
writing for many years now. The UK government, BBC, and most other
broadcast or published mass media, have used the short scale
exclusively in all contexts since the mid 1970s.
-----------


BillK