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From: Cursitor Doom <cd999666@notformail.com>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Datasheet-flation?
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2024 18:15:49 -0000 (UTC)
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On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 23:35:11 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:

> On 2024-11-29 18:32, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
>> On 11/29/24 15:33, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>>> On 2024-11-29 15:22, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
>>>> Jasen Betts <usenet@revmaps.no-ip.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 2024-11-24, Liz Tuddenham <liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> Cursitor Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [...]
>>>>>>> the English and American "billion" was harmonised many years ago
>>>>>>> at one thousand million so there's no confusion.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Can you give a reference for that?  I haven't found one.
>>>>>
>>>>> https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04440/
>>>>> SN04440.pdf
>>>>
>>>> Thank you, that clarifies the situation.  The English Billion still
>>>> exists but in 1957 British Ministers were told to use the American
>>>> meaning as it was considered "International" by the then Prime
>>>> Minister.
>>>>
>>>> Obviously it cannot be completely international if there are still
>>>> countries using it to mean Bi-million nowadays.
>>>
>>> And languages. Spanish, in Spain at least, a billion is a million
>>> million. So one has to be careful when translating.
>>>
>>>
>> All this abundantly demonstrates that we're better off using the metric
>> prefixes instead. It'll be next to impossible to make politicians and
>> finance accept that though...
> 
> Right!
> 
> Or notations like 5*10^9  or 5E9 (calculators did this. Do they still 
> do? 5E9 is very simple)

When you deal with RF it's essential to have a scientific calculator that 
can handle exponents like that. I continue to be amazed at the computing 
power they're capable of for next to no money. In real terms they're a 
fraction of the price they were when they first became available. The 
first ever scientific calculator I ever had was an HP one. A friend had 
the Sinclair one. Another had a Bowmar (they went bust around 1975 IIRC). 
They were a quantum leap over what we used beforehand.