Definition:Googol/Historical Note
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Historical Note on Googol
The googol was apparently invented by a schoolchild writing $1$ followed by $100$ zeroes on a blackboard:
- $10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000$
In discussing the googol, Edward Kasner and James Newman point out that the number of grains of sand on Coney Island is approximately $10^{20}$.
It is also estimated that the number of raindrops falling on New York, for example, during the course of a century, is far less than a googol.
The total number of particles in the visible universe, even, has been estimated as between $10^{80}$ and $10^{87}$, again still far less than a googol.
Numbers of this size are really only needed in the field of combinatorics, as was presciently suggested by Kasner and Newman.
Sources
- 1940: Edward Kasner and James Newman: Mathematics and the Imagination
- 1962: Clifton Fadiman: The Mathematical Magpie: Introduction
- 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): $10^{51}$
- 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): $10^{100}$
- 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $10^{51}$
- 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $10^{100}$