Would you like to see, for yourself, a demonstration of the power of exponentiality?

This came from Bill Gates’ book “The Road Ahead,” which I am currently reading. It was written in 1995, fifteen years ago. The book is about his prediction for the future of the internet.

From his book, as a demonstration of the power of exponentiality (is there such a word??): If you took one grain of wheat and put it on the 1st square of a chess board, put two grains of wheat on the 2nd square, 4 on on the 3rd, 8 on the 4th, and so on, how many grains of wheat would you have total by the time you finished at the last, 64th square?

Also, assume you took 1 second to count each grain, how many seconds, minutes, hours etc. would you have been at it when you were done.

(Hint: According to the book, this story comes from ancient India. The prince was so tickled with his minister for inventing chess, that he told his minister that he could have anything he wanted as a reward. The minister told him he wanted the wheat thing on the chess board. The prince said, “No prob!” and got to it. Long before he was half-way done he got so pissed that he had the minister’s head cut off! So the story goes… : ) And, the moral of the story is, “Chess is evil.”)