Crucially, freeze-frame gags provided opportunities for the mathematical writers on The Simpsons to throw in some references that would appeal to hard-core number nerds. For example, “Colonel Homer” (1992) features the first appearance of the local movie theater, and eagle-eyed viewers would have noticed that it is called the Springfield Googolplex. In order to appreciate this reference it is necessary to go back to 1938, when the American mathematician Edward Kasner was in conversation with his nephew Milton Sirotta. Kasner casually mentioned that it would be useful to have a label to describe the number 10100 (or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). The nine-year-old Milton suggested the word googol.
In his book Mathematics and the Imagination, Kasner recalled how the conversation with his nephew continued: “At the same time that he suggested ‘googol’ he gave a name for a still larger number: ‘Googolplex.’ A googolplex is much larger than a googol, but is still finite, as the inventor of the name was quick to point out. It was first suggested that a googolplex should be 1, followed by writing zeros until you get tired.”
The uncle rightly felt that the googolplex would then be a somewhat arbitrary and subjective number, so he suggested that the googolplex should be redefined as 10googol. That is 1 followed by a googol zeroes, which is far more zeroes than you could fit on a piece of paper the size of the observable universe, even if you used the smallest font imaginable.
These terms—googol and googolplex—have become moderately well known today, even among members of the general public, because the term googol was adopted by Larry Page and Sergey Brin as the name of their search engine. However, they preferred a common misspelling, so the company is called Google, not Googol. The name implies that the search engine provides access to vast amounts of information. Google headquarters is, not surprisingly, called the Googleplex.”