One Followed by One Hundred and Eleven Zeros

Date: 11 Jan 1995 16:16:22 -0500
From: Josh Baron
Subject: Math question

Hello,
        My question is: Is there a name for the number 1 followed 
by 111 zeros?
 
Thanks
jbaron@llwnet.ll.pbs.org

Date: 17 Jan 1995 00:37:38 GMT
From: Dr. Math
Subject: Re: Math quesiton

Hello there!

Well, here you're getting into some wierd territory.  You see, there's a
lot of disagreement on how to name big numbers.  There are basically 
two systems, the English system and the American system.  Here's a chart 
that lists equal numbers in each row:

English:                American:                  Number:

Thousand                Thousand                   10^3
Million                 Million                    10^6
Thousand Million        Billion                    10^9
Billion                 Trillion                   10^12
Thousand Billion        Quadrillion                10^15
Trillion                Quintillion                10^18

So those are pretty different systems! In the English system, the name
reflects the powers of 1,000,000, so your number, which is a thousand
times 18 powers of 1,000,000 is a thousand octodecillion in the British
system.

In the American system, I'm a little unsure how we'd name the number,
because I don't know what the number 10^93 is.  If 10^93 is something 
like trenillion, then your number is sextrenillion.  But my source (Webster's
Dictionary) doesn't give the name for numbers above vigintillion, which is
10^63.  See, the American system counts the powers of 1,000, but it
doesn't count one of the powers.  So it counts the "number of groups of
three 0's after 1,000", according to Webster.  

Anyway, I hope this helps you, and I encourage you to look in a dictionary
under "number" to figure out what some more numbers would be called.

Of course, most mathematicians would simply leave it as 10^111.  Now 
you see why.

Dr.Math