Word: googol
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Some years ago Edward Kasner, a whimsical Columbia University mathematician, coined the word "googol" as the name of a very large number: the number i followed by 100 zeros (TIME, Feb. 28, 1938). Dr. Kasner made it clear that the googol, though useful in the recondite realm of probability mathematics, would never be needed in mundane affairs...
Last week the Hungarian inflation came far closer to needing evaluation by googol than any other inflation in history. The pengo was quoted at 500.000,000,000,000,000,000 to the dollar. At that point the Finance Ministry withdrew it from circulation, replaced it by something called the "index pengo," at 6,500,000 to the dollar. If the ordinary pengo had merely added a zero a day for another 80 days, it would have passed the googol...
...once was Kasner's pupil. Mathematics is one of the hardest of all sciences to popularize, and the Kasner-Newman book is remarkably successful-perhaps because Dr. Kasner has had a lot of practice talking about mathematics to children. He is the man who gave the world the "googol" and the "googolplex" (TIME, Feb. 28, 1938). The googol is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros-a number greater than that of all the atoms in the universe. The googolplex is very much larger: it is the number 1 followed by so many zeros that the number of zeros...
...Reader Sweet mend his mathematics: a googol is not equal to 10². Ten squared is simply 100. Reader Sweet's googolplex is not a googolplex but merely a googol squared. By using a series of ascending powers, a googolplex could be written in comparatively small space; written straight out, it would, as TIME said, stretch further than the visible universe...
...Kasner's "googol" is affording much interest and entertainment. I hereby solicit more...