13 May
2010
13 May
'10
11:35 a.m.
40+ years ago, superscripts were rather awkward to do
with a typewriter,
so many working scientists started using E (not as appealing as "burp").
6.02 E 23
5 E 10
etc.
fwiw 9and to make this marginally on-topic), HP 9800 calcualtors accept
that notation when reading a string of characters from an interface
device. 1.2E3 would be taken as 1200. The HP11203 BCD interface actually
produces that sort of string in hardware from the BCD lines coming from a
measuring instruemtn.
Of course you get idiots who think '1 million is ten to the sixth. So
that's 10E6' Of course ti's 1E6 really...
-tony