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[recensere] History

1475 Jehan Adam recorded the words "bymillion" and "trimillion" as meaning 1012 and 1018 respectively.
1484 French mathematician Nicolas Chuquet, in his article "Triparty en la science des nombres" [1] [2], used the words byllion, tryllion, quadrillion, quyllion, sixlion, septyllion, ottyllion, and nonyllion to refer to 1012, 1018, etc. Chuquet's work was not published until the 1870s, but most of it was copied without attribution by Estienne de la Roche and published in his 1520 book, L'arismetique.
1549 Jacques Peletier used the name milliard (“milliart”) for "Million de Millions", i.e. 1012. He attributed this meaning to earlier usage by Guillaume Budé (1467-1540), a French scholar.
During 1600s The traditional six-digit-groups were split up. Therefore, in France and Italy, some scientists began using "billion" to mean 109. The majority either continued to say "thousand million", even with the three-digit-groups, or started using the Peletier term, milliard, as a synonym for "thousand million". This word was widely adopted in England, Germany, and the rest of Europe, including France and Italy, for those keeping Chuquet's original long scale billion.
Mid 1700s The short-scale meaning of the term "billion" was brought to the British American colonies.
Early 1800s France widely converted to the short scale, and was followed by the USA, which began teaching it in schools. Many French encyclopedias of the 19th century either omitted the long scale system or called it "a now obsolete system".
1926 H. W. Fowler's Modern English Usage noted "It should be remembered that ["billion"] does not mean in American use (which follows the French) what it means in British. For to us it means the second power of a million, i.e. a million millions (1,000,000,000,000); for Americans it means a thousand multiplied by itself twice, or a thousand millions (1,000,000,000), what we call a milliard. Since billion in our sense is useless except to astronomers, it is a pity that we do not conform."
1948 The General Conference on Weights and Measures proposed the universal use of the long scale, inviting the short scale countries to return.
1961 The Journal Officiel (the official French gazette) confirmed the official French use of the long scale (Décret 61-501, page 4587, note 3 and erratum on page 7572).
1974 British prime minister Harold Wilson explained to the House of Commons that UK government statistics would from now on use the short scale. [3] During the last quarter of 20th c., most other English-speaking countries followed this lead and switched to the short scale use. However, in all these countries, some limited long scale use persists and the official status of the short scale use is not clear.
1994 The Italian government officially confirmed the long scale. (Direttiva CE 1994 n. 55, page 12).