Google vs Googlel

4.8
(4)

Post photo: Google Logo | © Pixabay

First of all, the Googol was there first. Edward kasner created this new term for a 1 with 100 zeros as early as 1938. Before that, it was customary in German-speaking countries to speak of ten sexdecilliards — if a mathematician even dealt with such orders of magnitude. According to Kasner, he asked his nephew Milton sirotta, whether he could come up with a new term for this incredible number and published the term Googol for the first time in the book “Mathematics and the Imagination”, which he wrote together with in 1940 James Newman brought out.

The Googol and the later added Googolplex, a 10 to the power of Googol, are more popular scientific terms, since both English and German-speaking countries have their own nomenclature for numbers, both of which are based on Latin. So the actual English term for a googol is "Ten Duotrigintillion", which has no relevance in either English or German for most of us. To make things a bit more manageable, a googol is said to be larger than the total number of atoms in the universe, and it may be a long time before our debt clock reaches those heights. Thanks to our debt clock, we are at least able to juggle trillions, although here in Germany, a trillion is a 1 followed by 12 zeros. After the trillion comes the quadrillion and the trillion, a number with 18 zeros. Quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion, etc. have 6 more zeros and immediately — there is no highest number. Those of us who learned mathematics in high school and were allowed to do math with faculties can still quickly be satisfied that a Googol is still less than 70! is.

But even with the billions, many of us get into trouble, thanks to the different nomenclature, especially when they use English-language newspapers as journalists or read newspaper articles poorly translated into German as readers. As the most recent example, the US stimulus package from Joe Biden serve. When it comes to millions, the terminology still agrees, but even a billion is a trillion in the USA, which is why there are so many trillionaires there and we “only” have to be content with billionaires at the moment. I recommend this to anyone who wants to know more precisely why a US trillion is not a German trillion ntv article (May 10, 2016).

However, we owe the fact that we are allowed to juggle such numbers at all to the decimal system, which arose in India around the 8th century and introduced the number zero. In 1202 the mathematician published Leonardo of Pisa, today rather than Fibonacci known, a book that begins with the sentence: "The nine Indian figures are 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. With these nine figures and the character 0, which the Arabs call Zephirum, any number can be written."

But back to the Googol, which now has the highest level of awareness of larger numbers and which hardly anyone can really imagine. Daniel de Bruin has addressed this problem and created a machine that should make this number clearer. This machine is pretty to look at and is a particular delight for de Bruins electricity suppliers.

Probably due to the high profile of the Googol, the decided search enginesfounder, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 1997 for the name Google, which is also intended to clarify their goal of indexing as many websites as possible. Whereby today the Google index is still in the billions and is therefore still a little far from the Googol. Accordingly, the name of their company headquarters is "Googleplex", based on the number Googolplex, from which we already know that there are not enough atoms in the universe to be able to derive any kind of claim here.

For our normal everyday life it might even have been better if we had stayed with the Roman numerals, because then there would be neither billions of assets nor debt budgets in the trillions simply due to the lack of expression and calculation possibilities - and the demands on one's own performance would also be something more manageable.

But you can at least — thanks to the decimal system — build your own Googol machine with your children or grandchildren, or perhaps all alone during COVID-19, with your old Lego bricks and parts.

"Google's vision of the future is pure atom-age 1960s Jetsons fantasy, bubble-dwelling spiritless sexists above a ruined earth."

Julian Assange, Julian Assange Says “Apolitical Futurism of Star Trek”Fit Google (September 15, 2014)

How helpful was this post?

Click on the stars to rate the post!

Average rating 4.8 / 5. Number of reviews: 4

No reviews yet.

I'm sorry the post wasn't helpful to you!

Let me improve this post!

How can I improve this post?

Page views: 30 | Today: 1 | Counting since October 22.10.2023, XNUMX

Share: