Problem: In the mid-1980s, a recruiting advertisement for NSA had followed by one hundred at the top. The text began "You're looking at a 'googol.' Ten raised to the 100th power. One followed by zeroes. Counting hours a day, you would need years to reach a googol. Two lifetimes. It's a number that's impossible to grasp. A number beyond our imagination."
How many numbers would you have to count each second in order to reach a googol in years? (This problem is not related to the cryptosystems in this chapter. It is included to show how big digit numbers are from a computational viewpoint. Regarding the ad, one guess is that the advertising firm assumed that the time it took to factor a digit number back then was the same as the time it took to count to a googol.)