1. How Many?
Names of Large Numbers

2. How Many?

3. Thousands of Thousands. One calls them Millions.
Please watch a movie clip from
This clip is from the 1968 spaghetti Western “Once Upon A Time in the West”, produced by Sergio Leone and starring Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson.
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4. Million
Milion is an Old French word thought to derive from Old Italian milione, an intensification of mille, a thousand. That is, a million is a big thousand.
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5. Billion, Trillion, …
Traditional American usage and modern British usage, assigns new names for each power of one thousand.
Thus, a billion is 1000 × = 109; a trillion is 1000 × = 1012; and so forth. Due to its dominance in the financial world (and by the US-dollar) this was adopted for official United Nations documents.
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6. Usage of names of large numbers
Some names of large numbers, such as million, billion, and trillion, have real referents in human experience, and are encountered in many contexts. At times, the names of large numbers have been forced into common usage as a result of excessive inflation. The highest numerical value banknote ever printed was a note for 1 sextillion pengő (1021) printed in Hungary in In 2009, Zimbabwe printed a 100 trillion (1014) Zimbabwean dollar note, which in January 2009 was only worth about 30 US dollars.
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7. Usage of names of large numbers
Names of larger numbers have a tenuous, artificial existence, rarely found outside definitions, lists, and discussions of the ways in which large numbers are named. Even well-established names like sextillion are rarely used, since in the contexts of science, astronomy, and engineering, where large numbers often occur, numbers are usually written using scientific notation. In this notation, powers of ten are expressed as 10 with a numeric superscript, e.g., "The X-ray emission of the radio galaxy is 1.3 x 1045 ergs." When a number such as 1045 needs to be referred to in words, it is simply read out: "ten to the forty-fifth." This is just as easy to say, easier to understand, and less ambiguous than “quattuordecillion”.
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8. Base-illion Value USA and modern British 1 106 Million 2 109 Billion 3
1012
Trillion 4
1015
Quadrillion 5
1018
Quintillion 6
1021
Sextillion 7
1024
Septillion 8
1027
Octillion 9
1030
Nonillion 10
1033
Decillion
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9. Base-illion Value USA and modern British 11 1036 Undecillion 12 1039
Duodecillion 13
1042
Tredecillion 14
1045
Quattuordecillion 15
1048
Quindecillion 16
1051
Sexdecillion 17
1054
Septendecillion 18
1057
Octodecillion 19
1060
Novemdecillion 20
1063
Vigintillion
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10. Base-illion Value USA and modern British 30 1093 Trigintillion 40
10123
Quadragintillion 50
10153
Quinquagintillion 60
10183
Sexagintillion 70
10213
Septuagintillion 80
10243
Octogintillion 90
10273
Nonagintillion
100
10303
Centillion
200
10603
Ducentillion
300
10903
Trecentillion
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11. Historical Note
Up until the 1970’s the British defined a Billion to be a Million Million.
i.e = 1012
After this time the world over has generally defined a billion to be
One Thousand Million.
i.e = 109
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12. How Many?

13. Clara was one in a million, one in a billion, one in a googolplex.
Please watch a movie clip from
This clip is from the 1990 Science Fiction Western “Back to the Future Part III”, from writer/director Robert Zemeckis and starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd.
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14. The googol family
The names googol and googolplex were invented by Edward Kasner's nephew, Milton Sirotta, and introduced in Kasner and Newman's 1940 book, Mathematics and the Imagination, in the following passage:
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15. The name "googol" was invented by a child (Dr
The name "googol" was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner's nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely 1 with a hundred zeroes after it. He was very certain that this number was not infinite, and therefore equally certain that it had to have a name. At the same time that he suggested "googol" he gave a name for a still larger number: "Googolplex".
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16. A googolplex is much larger than a googol, but is still finite, as the inventor of the name was quick to point out. It was first suggested that a googolplex should be 1, followed by writing zeros until you got tired. This is a description of what would actually happen if one actually tried to write a googolplex, but different people get tired at different times and it would never do to have Carnera (a champion boxer) a better mathematician than Dr. Einstein, simply because he had more endurance. The googolplex is, then, a specific finite number, with so many zeros after the 1 that the number of zeros is a googol.
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17. The googol family
1 googol = 10100
1 googolplex = 10googol =
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18. References / Sources:
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