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On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 02:26:09PM -0800, Bill Studenmund wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 09:43:30AM +0200, Alan Barrett wrote:
>=20
> Also, from looking in my dictionaries (both a 30 year old Webster's=20
> Dictionary and the Webster's on-line dictionary), "Billion" came from=20
> French. In French it is a thousand millions, which matches the American=
=20
> English usage. So who then is historically correct? ;-)
>=20
> I tried looking it up in the OED, but they want $30/month. :-|

Someone looked it up for me, and all I have to say is, "LOL."

It seems that both American English and British English got billion from
French, just that the French arithmeticians changed their minds between
the two times! The French then changed back to the million^2 definition in=
=20
1948.

So we can both blame the French.

Take care,

Bill

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