When I was young I had a 'pocket encyclopaedia' given to me when my parents bought my first school uniform before heading off to grammar school. Of course 'pocket encyclopaedia' is a contradiction in terms, however it did feature one interesting point which I well recall thinking must have caused much confusion between nations. Recently the problem came back to mind and I thought I would share.
The problem concerned the billion which, as we all know, equates to one thousand million or 1,000,000,000. However in those far off days of the 1960s this was common to Continental Europe and the USA, while good old Blighty used one million million or 1,000,000,000,000.
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