From: utzoo!decvax!microsof!uw-beave!uw-june!palmer Newsgroups: net.nlang Title: Re: billion Article-I.D.: uw-june.313 Posted: Thu Feb 24 10:28:03 1983 Received: Fri Feb 25 08:01:01 1983 References: houti.215 One American Billion = one thousand million = 10**9 = 1,000,000,000 (I think this is called a milliard in Britain) British Billion = one million million = 10**12 = 1,000,000,000,000 (what Americans call a trillion) What is a British trillion, 10**18? Physical scientists get around this by sing prefixes: a gigabuck = $10**9 , about the price of a third of a bare-bones aircraft carrier a terrabuck = $10**12 , about the size of the U.S. national debt. David Palmer