4 ms·

Lots of interesting facts and tidbits in there. I'm guessing we all know that Google was misspelling of the number Googol, however, I wonder how many of you kn

by froo 17y ago

Lots of interesting facts and tidbits in there. I'm guessing we all know that Google was misspelling of the number Googol, however, I wonder how many of you know that the Googol was inspired by a cartoon character from the 1930's named Barney Google http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7c/090636google.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7c/090636google.j... So it seems to have come full circle in that regard.

harpastum 17y ago
I'm not sure which is correct, but wikipedia seems to think that the word 'googol' was first used by Edward Kasner in 1920: The name "googol" was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner's nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Kasner#Googol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Kasner#Googol EDIT: After looking around some more, you seem to be correct: "...[Kasner] asked his nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, to suggest a word. The youthful comic strip reader told Kasner to use "Google". Kasner agreed and in 1940 he introduced the words "googol" and "googolplex" in his book, Mathematics and the Imagination." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Google_and_Snuffy_Smith#Origin_of_.22Google.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Google_and_Snuffy_Smith#...