Thousand to Billions (short Scale) (k to B)
1 thousand equals 0.000001 billions (short scale) exactly.
How to convert thousand to billions (short scale)
To convert thousand to billions (short scale), multiply the number of thousand by 0.000001. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply billions (short scale) by 1,000,000.
billions (short scale) = thousand × 0.000001
Example: 10 thousand = 0.00001 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
Thousand (k)
One thousand (10³).
Thousand traces back through Middle English thousend to Old English þūsend and a Proto-Germanic form, and it has close relatives across the Germanic languages: German tausend, Dutch duizend, Swedish tusen, and Icelandic þúsund. Cognates also appear in Slavic and Baltic languages, among them Polish tysiąc and Lithuanian tūkstantis. Learned English vocabulary adds chiliad, a collective for a thousand, and millennium.
Its Roman numeral is M, and its scientific shorthand is the SI prefix kilo-, standing for 10³. The word has not always meant 1,000. In Old Norse counting, which grouped numbers in twelves of tens, a thousand meant 1,200. At ordinary scales, a thousand seconds is about 16.7 minutes, and a thousand days is about 2.7 years.
1 thousand = 1,000 pieces (exactly).
Sources: Wiktionary: thousand; Wikipedia: Long hundred; BIPM SI Brochure, 9th edition (2019)
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
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- Pieces to billions (short scale)
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- Lakhs to billions (short scale)
- Millions to billions (short scale)
- Crores to billions (short scale)
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- Hundred to billions (short scale)
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See all counting & quantity units.