Populations are also expressed in named numbers (millions, billions) and use the convention that a billion is 10^9. That said, I do think that originally billion meant million^2.

I think I remember that the "short scale" may have been used as early as the first part of the 17th century, but I'm by no means certain on this. I am sure of though, from reading old scientific works, is that after that point in time the convention toward long or short scales seemed to change with the wind in many parts of the world.

I feel the best way to disambiguate, at least in written works, is to use numeric representation. As for spoken terms, the short scale seems to have the upper hand right now, but it's not universal.

When I was in university, we almost always refered to large numbers in numerical terms (except frequency as Georacer noted and possibly voltages) For example we would say the speed of light was "Three times ten to the eight meters per second" or "Three times ten to the ten centimeters per second" and never say "Three hundred million meters per second" or "Thirty billion centimeters per second". However, we had no problem naming small numbers like "atto-seconds", "femto-meters", "pico-litres", "nano-grams", "micro-volts", "milli-ohms" and so on...

Georacer, what is the convention in Greece right now?

 

Like I said, computer memory slings Giga around with ease, and we are firmly in Tera. It keeps growing.

I have a 4-terabyte RAID array in my home office. I'd rather it not be slung around, though.

 

@BillO

In Greece, I have only known the short scale being used, as the wiki page says. I don't know when this was first adopted.