Gigawatts or Jigawatts?

Last Updated (Tuesday, 23 March 2010 11:21)

We all know what Doc Brown said in the first movie. "I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need".  But he pronounced gigawatts as if it were spelled with a "j", as in jigawatts.  Being an electrical engineer, I had heard the word pronounced a few times before but always with the "g" sound.   I always figured that the word in the movie was made up and just meant to sound like a really large amount.  It wasn't unit I started researching this flux capacitor project that I stumbled across a few references to the actual term. 

It turns out that the original pronunciation of "giga" was with the "j" sound.  Looking at the entry on Merriam-Webster.com they give two valid pronunciations ji-g-wät and  gi-g-wät.  They even have a neat audio clip of each being spoken.  I am certainly happy that they used the original, older sounding pronunciation of the word since the story involved time travel and Doc Brown conceived of the flux capacitor in 1955.  Ironically, most references point to the early 1960's as the first time the term was used.  That's ok in the start of the film as it's set in 1985,  but in 1955 the younger Doc Brown should have said "1.21 gigawatts?  What's a gigawatt Marty?