OCR Text |
Show A BILLION How Sir Henry Bessemer Dissected the Figures. One billion: What is it? Its arithmetical arithmet-ical symbol Is simple and without much pretension Let us briefly take a glance at It as a measure of time, distant - and weight A a mensuro of time. I would lake one, second sec-ond ;t. the j nit. and carry myself In tli. 1 k 1 1 1 1 h 1 1. ij,ii ' he I ipse of ages bit. k to the first day of the year 1 of our era, remembering that In n those .-urs we have 3tj days and In every day just SC. 400 seconds of time. Hence In retumltiK In thought back again to this year of gro e. I9tx, on. might havo supposed thai a bil- li.in of Is had long since lurscd but llil-i Is not eo. for 11 takes Just 11.683 years, 17 days "2 hours. 4r. minutes nnd 5 seconds t" constitute a billion of seconds of tlnte. Let us try In Imagination to arrange a hiiii.in sovereigns for inspection Let us put one on tile ground and pile upon It u mnn ns will reuch twenty feet In height, tlion let us placo numbers of similar sim-ilar columns In close contact, forming a straight line and making a sort of wall twent feet high Imagine two such walls running parallel t each other and forming as It were, a long street It Is not until wo have extended our Imaginary street t s distance Of 288 SVs miles that we shall have presented for Inspection our one billion of coins Or. In lieu of this arrangement, we may plnce them flat upon the ground forming one continuous line like a long golden .'ham with ever link In close contact But to do tliN w must pass over land and sea mountain and vallc, drsert and plain crossing the equator and returning around the Southern Hemisphere through the trackless ocean, retrace our way again across the equator, then still on and on until wo again arrive at our titurtlng polni; and when we have thus passed a g.ldcn chain round the huge bulk of Ho- eurlh w shall be but at tht beginning of our task We must drag this Imaginary i hnln no les than Tiii times around the globe Buch a chain would require for its transport no less than J325 ships, each with a full cargo of 3000 tons Even then there would be a residue of 447 tons, ipproentlng '.l.asi.930 sovereigns For a measure of height, let us take th. thin sheets of paper on which these lines are printed If laid out Hat and llrmlv pr. ss. .1 together, as in a well-bound well-bound book, these would represent a measure of about l-Ttt of an Inch In thickness Lei us set h..w high a dense pile formed by a billion of these thin pa- per leaves would reach We must, in imagination, im-agination, pile them vertically upward by degrees reaching to the- height of "in tallest spires; and passing these, the pile must still grow higher t, pplng the Alps nnd Andes and th- highest peaks of the Himalayas Still pile on your thousands and millions of thin leaves, for we are onl) beginning to rear the mighty mass Add millions on millions of sheets and thousands Of miles on Ihese. and still the number will lack it" due amount when our one billion sheets are superimposed upon each other and pressed Into a compact com-pact mass they have reached an altitude of 74, US miles' London Answers |