"Little Beth Atkinson's birth – at three minutes past midnight yesterday – made medical history. Beth, who came into the world at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary, became the first baby in the country to be given an NHS ‘lifelong’ identification number.

Well.... what WAS it??

000000001 perhaps?

OOps! We gotta re-think this, 'cause there's NO WAY that 9 digits can identify more than 6 BILLION people world wide!

15 posted on 02/06/2003 5:45:38 AM PST by Elsie (I trust in Jesus.... THOUSANDS OF EXISTING MANUSCRIPTS speak of Him!)

26 characters in our alphabet plus 10 digits in our base 10 numeral system equals 36 unique digits.

I am not a mathematician so maybe one will correct me but 36 unique digits times 9 positions equals one hundred and one trillion, five hundred and ninety-nine billion, nine hundred and fifty-six million, six hundred and sixty-eight thousand, four hundred and sixteen unique ID numbers. (101,599,956,668,416) More that enough for everyone in the world.

Existing social security number databases are not designed for any alphabetic characters.