On 13 May 2010, at 18:00, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: Ok so I make spelling mistakes. I meant principle not principal. English is a language generally defined by common usage not statute but if we allow that anyone can redefine some number, any number to mean something different we are on a very slippery slope leading to mayhem. Just because the numbers are ones which few people used back in the 1930 does not mean that nobody used them, otherwise they would not have existed. We now have the ludicrous situation that we have to consider when a number was used, which side of the atlantic it was said, whether it refers to monetary units or some other meaning and carry round a table in our heads of so if I read a scientific american book written in say 1920 which refers to so many billion atoms then I know it is 10^12 but a similar book written twenty years later would be 10^9 and if it was written in the UK in 1940 it meant 10^12 but if I read something written in 2000 by a BBC economic journalist about dollars or pounds or euros it means 10^9 but if the same journalist wrote about the price of a billion grammes of water he would mean 10^12 according to the BBC rules. The principle is that numbers are not context sensitive. Roger.