Thanks. Now I can understand why billion was a million million. The prefix
(bi) meant million **2 (squared0 while tri meant million **3 (cubed).
Interestingly, the number 1,000,000,000 was called "a thousand million or
milliard" according to the site provided in the former English system.

Bob


"ianto" wrote in message
...

"N Cook" wrote in message
...
trillion = million million million except France where it means million
million , no mention of USA.


There are two systems of naming large numbers ( sometimes called long
scale and short scale ) both of which originated in France and are
still in use today. They are described at this site:

http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/large.html

As mentioned on this page the UK officially switched from billion =
million million to billion = thousand million in the mid 1970s.

Mike Capel

capel AT mts DOT net