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Comment by jordigh | Hacker News Reader

I can't remember if I knew the word "googol" before I knew this story or not. I think I may have encountered it in World of Mathematics in high school. Or I may be misremembering and making up a pretty story to make myself sound smarter than I am.

Human memory is so weird sometimes.

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At least in my elementary school, it was one of those pieces of trivia that the kids would latch on to and try to throw into conversations whenever they could. Like the words antidisestablishmentarianism or defenestrate. It'd be interesting to see how regional/generational these popular trivia trends are.

Yep, I have one of those strong, vivid memories of my 7th grade math teacher telling us about it as one of those fun tidbits for the nerds to latch on to. I recognized it and thought it was clever when I came across the search engine a couple years later, but I thought the spelling was right.

I loved the idea of a googol and a googolplex when I was a kid. I may also be remembering incorrectly that a googolplexplex meant a 1 with a googolplex zeros after it. There was also the notion of the word googolplexplexplex... (Appending a googol 'plex's to 'googol')

Tidbit: my iPad tried to autocorrect 'googol' to 'Google'

I did know "googol" and "googolplex" but only by virtue of picking it up as trivia when I was a kid. Pretty sure it was a kid named Mike in grade school who enjoyed one-upping other kids on nerdy facts who told me it was "the biggest number". Then again, this was the same kid who later on told me that the actual biggest number was "inthidity".

I have no idea why I remember this but it's just a memory that sticks out for some reason. He must've only heard the word "infinity" but not seen it written out because it wasn't like a speech impediment or anything. Later on I remember learning about the word/concept of infinity and realizing that must've been what Mike was talking about.

Anyway, sorry for the grade school flashback. Just one of those things I haven't thought about in ages.

Funny datapoint - 1e100.net (a googol) is used by Google for some of their servers.

I'm pretty sure Carl Sagan mentions both googol and googolplex in Cosmos.

Most definitely. That's where I first heard the terms. Sagan also demonstrated the length of the number by rolling out a roll of toilet paper with a googolplex written on it. https://youtu.be/0lFQOmb6mVs

I was taught what a googol was (with the correct spelling) 10 years ago when I was in year 10 at secondary school by my teacher Mrs Humble. I was sat in between Kaylee and Simon, it was summer. Also it was the correct answer for the final question of the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire episode where Major Ingram cheated to win £1M. I remember watching the documentary about that episode in a caravan in Wales and thinking "I could have won £1M!".

I got it from Steve Martin & googlephonic sound (1979) which he describes as the highest possible number of speakers next to infinity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjjsz14hL48

The word was at least pop-culture-accessible enough to have been a Simpsons gag (the "Springfield Googolplex" movie theaters) years before Google existed.

Did you ever watch Cosmos with Carl Sagan? Because I am fairly sure that in one episode he covered googol (and googolplex).

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