Reams to Billions (short Scale) (rm to B)
1 ream equals 5×10⁻⁷ billions (short scale) exactly.
How to convert reams to billions (short scale)
To convert reams to billions (short scale), multiply the number of reams by 5×10⁻⁷. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply billions (short scale) by 2,000,000.
billions (short scale) = reams × 5×10⁻⁷
Example: 10 reams = 0.000005 billions (short scale).
Large-number names differ around the world: this site uses the short scale (billion = 10⁹) by default, and lists the long-scale billion separately.
About these units
Ream (rm)
500 sheets of paper (20 quires), the standard retail package for printer paper. A short ream of 480 sheets survives for some specialty papers.
Ream comes from the Arabic rizmah, a bundle of paper, passing through Spanish resma and Old French reyme; the Moors introduced cotton papermaking to Spain. Its size has varied. The modern standard, 500 sheets or 20 quires of 25, is the ISO and DIN definition and what retail paper almost always means. A short ream of 480 sheets, 20 quires of 24, was formerly the British standard and survives for tissue, greaseproof, handmade, and blotting papers. J. S. Bach's Weimar manuscript paper was ordered by the 480-sheet ream.
Other versions include the 516-sheet printer's or perfect ream, the 504-sheet envelope-paper ream, and the 472-sheet mill ream for handmade paper, which was 18 quires of 24 good sheets plus two 20-sheet quires of damaged ones. In 1922 the UK set machine-made writing and printing paper at 500 sheets. ISO 4046-3:2002 defines a ream as a pack of 500 identical sheets and recommends another term, such as pack, for other counts.
1 ream = 500 pieces (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Units of paper quantity
Billion (short Scale) (B)
One thousand million (10⁹). The meaning used in the US, UK and most English-speaking countries today.
For decades British and American speakers meant different things by billion. The short-scale sense, a thousand million, took hold in the United States in the 19th century, while Britain kept the older meaning of a million million. From the 1950s the short scale spread through British technical writing and journalism, and Winston Churchill had remarked in 1941 that for practical financial purposes a billion was a thousand millions.
The official break came on December 20, 1974. Asked in Parliament whether ministers would be required to use the traditional British meaning, Prime Minister Harold Wilson answered no, explaining that billion was now used internationally for 1,000 million and that using it any other way would cause confusion. He conceded it could still be read as a million million and asked colleagues to avoid ambiguity. Today a billion is 10⁹, matching the SI prefix giga, and the UN projected that world population would reach 8 billion on November 15, 2022.
1 billion (short scale) = 1,000,000,000 pieces (exactly).
Sources: Hansard, 20 Dec 1974: Billion (Definition), written answer; Wikipedia: Billion; United Nations: Day of Eight Billion
Related conversions
- Billions (short scale) to reams (reverse)
- Reams to pieces
- Reams to dozens
- Reams to lakhs
- Reams to millions
- Reams to crores
- Pieces to billions (short scale)
- Dozens to billions (short scale)
- Lakhs to billions (short scale)
- Millions to billions (short scale)
- Crores to billions (short scale)
- Pairs to billions (short scale)
- Hundred to billions (short scale)
- Gross to billions (short scale)
- Thousand to billions (short scale)
- Trillions (short scale) to billions (short scale)
- Score to billions (short scale)
- Half dozens to billions (short scale)
See all counting & quantity units.