Billions of What?

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20299, 8 May 1934, Page 6

Billions of What?

Dear Sir,—Men in charge of the successful progress for the furtherance of giving industry an extra speed of a few miles per hour are apt to overlook the fact that when such a condition is created, the mortals whose evolution has been stationary through no fault of their own find themselves hopelessly behind with the commercial activity so far in the lead that no glimmer of hope is left for the struggling humanity of ever getting on a level with their own inventions. And the daily expression of certain members of the public, with perhaps an uncertain intelligence, in millions and even billions, is in consequence rather confusing, and does not produce any special feature in connection with reorganising our system, for which the late war in Europe was wrongfully blamed by some people. Newspaper correspondents in Germany some time ago were talking lightly of “ billions.” What is a billion' In New Zealand, as well as in Germany, it is the figure one w’ith twelve noughts (a million millions), but the Americans and the French hold that there are only nine noughts (1000 millions, or a milliard). Just to give you an idea of a billion, English and German style, look at your watch and you will find that it ticks five times in two seconds. That means 150 times every minute, 9000 times an It ticks a million times in four days, fifteen hours, six minutes and forty seconds. At that rate it would take roughly 12,600 years to tick a billion times. A watch which began to tick at the very beginning *-he Christian era would now have, in round figures, 150,000,000.000 ticks behind it. and to accomplish its billion ticks it would still have steady work for something like 10,750 years in front of it.—l am. etc., THOMAS LAWSON.