[Vision2020] The national debt

[Kenneth Marcy]

On Thursday 09 October 2008 07:10:05 Ellen Roskovich wrote:
> The "National Debt Clock" in NYC has run out of numbers.  Plans are to add
> a couple more spaces so our kids and grandkids can track the debt to
> quadrillion dollars.

This was not unexpected. It has been the case for some time that printing desk 
calculators of the type accountants used before personal computers do not 
have enough digits to compute various federal budget and debt numbers.

> I learned somthing this morning. . . . guess I never had reason to wonder
> what followed a trillion.  Now I know what we have to look forward to.

Just for fun, here is a chart showing numbers from much smaller to much larger 
than are used in everyday discourse. Mathematicians, computists (like 
pianists, except with computers), and various types of scientists and 
engineers frequently use some of these orders of magnitudes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(numbers)


Ken