Billions And Billions

“There’s billions and billions of stars but I’m the biggest one by far” – Cayuga’s Waiters parodying Carl Sagan

Bic sold it’s 100 Billionth pen today. That’s 100,000,000,000 pens. (At least in America where a billion has nine zeroes, in Europe a billion is 12 zeros). That’s a lot of pens, I’m sure I’ve bought at least a hundred of them myself, all of which I’ve lost. Which brings up the point of where have all those 100 billion pens disappeared to? What’s more amazing is since the invention of the desktop computer and the paperless society we don’t need pens anymore, yet apparently people still buy them. So I started thinking what else does 100 Billion mean:

• Laid out end to end 100 Billion hot dogs would encircle the globe 404 times at the equator
• McDonalds count of customers served hit 100 Billion in the mid 1990’s causing a Y2K problem on their signs
• There are over 100 Billion galaxies in the universe
• In July of this year text messengers in the UK had sent over 100 Billion text messages. (I guess that’s what the kids are doing these days).
• The brain has an average of 100 Billion neurons
• Californians recycled over 100 Billion beverage containers in the first 10 years of the state’s recycling program started in 1987

Congratulations Bic!