Although we are accustomed to speak in the most airy fashion of millions, billions, &c., and “rattle” off at a breath strings of figures, the fact still remains that we are unable to grasp their vastness. Man is finite—numbers are infinite!
ONE MILLION
Is beyond our conception. We can no more realise its immensity, than we can the tenth part of a second. It should be a pleasing fact to note that commercial calculations do not often extend beyond millions; generally speaking, it is in the realm of speculative calculation only, such as probability, astronomy, &c., that we are brought face to face with these unthinkable magnitudes.
Who, for instance, could form the slightest idea that the odds against a person tossing a coin in the air so as to bring a head 200 times in succession are
160693804425899027554196209234116260522202993782792835301375
(over I decillion, &c.) to 1 against him? Suppose that all the men, women and children on the face of the earth were to keep on tossing coins at the rate of a million a second for a million years, the odds would still be too great for us to realise against any one person succeeding in performing the above feat, and yet the number representing the odds would be only half as long as the one already given.
Or, who could understand the other equally astounding fact that Sirius, the Dog-star, is 130435000000000 miles from the earth, or even that the earth itself is 5426000000000000000000 tons in weight.
WHAT IS A BILLION
In Europe and America, the billion is 1,000,000,000—a thousand millions—but in Great Britain and her Colonies, a billion is reckoned 1,000,000,000,000—a million millions: a difference which should perhaps be worth remembering in the case of francs and dollars.
One billion sovereigns placed side by side would extend to a distance of over 18,000,000 miles, and make a band which would pass 736 times round the globe, or, if lying side by side, would form a golden belt around it over 26 ft. wide; if the sovereigns were placed on top of each other flatways, the golden column would be more than a million miles in height.