page_title: Long and short scales
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Long and short scales / History
caption_attribution_description: Page where Chuquet first describes the naming method for "zillions".
context_page_description: The long and short scales are two of several naming systems for integer powers of ten which use some of the same terms for different magnitudes.
  For whole numbers smaller than 1,000,000,000, such as one thousand or one million, the two scales are identical. For larger numbers, starting with 10⁹, the two systems differ. For identical names, the long scale proceeds by powers of one million, whereas the short scale proceeds by powers of one thousand. For example, one billion is one thousand millions in the short scale, while it is one million millions in the long scale. The long scale system introduces new terms for the intervening values, typically replacing the word ending -ion with -iard.
context_section_description: The existence of the different scales means that care must be taken when comparing large numbers between languages or countries, or when interpreting old documents in countries where the dominant scale has changed over time. For example, British English, French, and Italian historical documents can refer to either the short or long scale, depending on the date of the document, since each of the three countries has used both systems at various times in its history. Today, the United Kingdom officially uses the short scale, but France and Italy use the long scale.
  The pre-1974 former British English word billion, post-1961 current French word billion, post-1994 current Italian word bilione, German Billion; Dutch biljoen; Swedish biljon; Finnish biljoona; Danish billion; Polish bilion, Spanish billón; Slovenian bilijon and the European Portuguese word bilião (with a different spelling to the Brazilian Portuguese variant, but in Brazil referring to short scale) all refer to 10¹², being long-scale terms. Therefore, each of these words translates to the American English or post-1974 British English word: trillion (10¹² in the short scale), and not billion (10⁹ in the short scale).
  On the other hand, the pre-1961 former French word billion, pre-1994 former Italian word bilione, Brazilian Portuguese word bilhão and the Welsh word biliwn all refer to 10⁹, being short scale terms. Each of these words translates to the American English or post-1974 British English word billion (10⁹ in the short scale).
  The term billion originally meant 10¹² when introduced.
  In long scale countries, milliard was defined to its current value of 10⁹, leaving billion at its original 10¹² value and so on for the larger numbers. Some of these countries, but not all, introduced new words billiard, trilliard, etc. as intermediate terms.
  In some short scale countries, milliard was defined to 10⁹ and billion dropped altogether, with trillion redefined down to 10¹² and so on for the larger numbers.
  In many short scale countries, milliard was dropped altogether and billion was redefined down to 10⁹, adjusting downwards the value of trillion and all the larger numbers.
  Timeline
  As large numbers in natural sciences are usually represented by metric prefixes, scientific notation or otherwise, the most commonplace occurrence of large numbers represented by long or short scale terms is in finance. The following table includes some historic examples related to hyper-inflation and other financial incidents.
  Timeline
caption: Le Triparty en la Science des Nombres par Maistre Nicolas Chuquet Parisien
   an extract from Chuquet's original 1484 manuscript