Further Antedating of "Googol" and "Googolplex"

[Shapiro, Fred]

I verified this from the original source.

Fred Shapiro



googol (OED 1940), googolplex (OED 1940)

1937 Edward Kasner in _Scripta Mathematica Forum Lectures_ 70  You may want to know where I got the name "googol."  I was walking in the woods with my nephew one day, and I asked the boy to think up any name for the number, any amusing name that entered his head.  He suggested "googol."  At the same time, he gave me a name for a still larger number: "googolplex."  A googolplex is much larger than a googol, but it is still finite.

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