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The former Weights and Measures office in Seven Sisters, London (590 Seven Sisters Road). The imperial system of units, imperial system or imperial units (also known as British Imperial [1] or Exchequer Standards of 1826) is the system of units first defined in the British Weights and Measures Act 1824 and continued to be developed through a series of Weights and Measures Acts and amendments.
Over time, the metric system has influenced the United States through international trade and standardisation. The use of the metric system was made legal as a system of measurement in 1866 [165] and the United States was a founding member of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in 1875. [166]
Countries using the metric (SI), imperial, and US customary systems as of 2019. The International System of Units, or SI, [1]: 123 is a decimal and metric system of units established in 1960 and periodically updated since then.
The British imperial system uses a stone of 14 lb, a long hundredweight of 112 lb and a long ton of 2,240 lb. The stone is not a measurement of weight used in the US. The US customary system uses the short hundredweight of 100 lb and short ton of 2,000 lb. Where these systems most notably differ is in their units of volume.
The imperial system of units was developed and used in the United Kingdom and its empire beginning in 1824. The metric system has, to varying degrees, replaced the imperial system in the countries that once used it. Most of the units of measure have been adapted in one way or another since the Norman Conquest (1066).
Use of the term "English units" can be ambiguous, as, in addition to the meaning used in this article, it is sometimes used to refer to the units of the descendant Imperial system as well to those of the descendant system of United States customary units. [1]
The US customary system has one set of units for fluids and another set for dry goods. The imperial system has only one set defined independently of, and subdivided differently from, its US counterparts. By the end of the 18th century, various systems of volume measurement were in use throughout the British Empire.
At the time of the French Revolution there were over 5000 different foot measures. The current UK imperial system is based on the Weights and Measures Act 1824 (5 Geo. 4. c. 74), dating from about 30 years after the founding of the metric system, and some of its units differ very significantly from the United States customary units of the same ...