Billions, trillions and beyond
When I was at school in the 1970s and 1980s, a billion was a million million (1,000,000,000,000), a trillion a million billion (1 followed by 18 zeros). At some point since then, a billion seems to have become a thousand million (1,000,000,000), copying the value Americans have always given it; a trillion has become a million million (1,000,000,000,000).
But why?
Here's my guess. In everyday life, people are unlikely to come across billions or trillions of anything. After all, whereas it would take about 11.57 days to count to a million at one count per second, to count to a British billion would take 31,688 years. Only astronomers, molecular scientists, financial institutions, geologists etc. use numbers of this size.
Such people (a) use orders of magnitude (z x 10 to the power of n) and (b) must avoid misunderstandings with transatlantic peers.
Perhaps also, a million has become something of a devalued denomination thanks to financial inflation; houses and footballers costing a million aren't big news any more (see Dr Evil's hilarious ransom of one million dollars after being frozen since the 1960s in Austin Powers). We would be using the phrase "thousand million" an awful lot nowadays – that's a lot of newsprint and airtime; the US version seems much more efficient.
Of course, in Europe, the "old" billion, trillion etc. system is used. However, it must be remembered that they are not English, so they have lots of alternative words to ours.
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