In regards to the difference between American and European billion&#x2F;trillion&#x2F;etc:<p><pre><code>  &#x2F;&#x2F; These number terms were described by N. Chuquet and De la Roche in the 16th
  &#x2F;&#x2F; century as being successive powers of a million.  These definitions are 
  &#x2F;&#x2F; still used in most European countries.  The current US definitions for these
  &#x2F;&#x2F; numbers arose in the 17th century and don&#x27;t make nearly as much sense.
</code></pre>
Huh? Admittedly I&#x27;m biased, being American, but how do the American definitions not make nearly as much sense?<p>By the time &quot;billion&quot; was defined by Chuquet and De la Roche, the concepts of &quot;ten thousand&quot; and &quot;hundred thousand&quot; were in widespread use. Those were followed by &quot;million&quot;. So there&#x27;s already a precedent for &quot;we multiply things by a hundred before coming up with a new name&quot;. How does it make sense to change that to &quot;but after a point, we multiply things by a thousand before coming up with a new name&quot;?<p>I could see a couple systems that would arguably make more sense:<p>* ten, hundred, thousand, million, billion, trillion... (no multipliers)<p>* ten, hundred, ten hundred, thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, million, ten million, hundred million, thousand million, billion..., million billion, trillion... (use all previous multipliers before creating the next new name)<p>Admittedly, the US uses neither of those systems. But sticking with the precedent of &quot;a hundred is the highest multiplier&quot; makes sense.