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The avoirdupois weight system is thought to have come into use in England around 1300. [citation needed] It was originally used for weighing wool. In the early 14th century several other specialized weight systems were used, including the weight system of the Hanseatic League with a 16-ounce pound of 7200 grains and an 8-ounce mark.
A US fluid ounce is 1 / 16 of a US pint (about 1·04 UK fluid ounces or 29.6 mL); a UK fluid ounce is 1 / 20 of a UK pint (about 0·96 US fluid ounce or 28.4 mL). On a larger scale, perhaps for institutional cookery, a UK gallon is 8 UK pints (160 UK fluid ounces; about 1·2 US gallons or 4.546 litres), whereas the US gallon is ...
However, apothecaries' weight has now been superseded by the metric system. One important difference is the widespread use in Britain of the stone of 14 pounds (6.350 293 18 kg) for body weight; this unit is not used in the United States, although flour was sold by a barrel of 196 pounds (14 stone) until World War II.
Various historic pounds from a German textbook dated 1848. The libra (Latin for 'scale'/'balance') is an ancient Roman unit of mass that is now equivalent to 328.9 g (11.60 oz). [17] [18] [19] It was divided into 12 unciae (singular: uncia), or ounces. The libra is the origin of the abbreviation for pound, "lb".
The apothecaries and troy pounds are divided into 12 ounces (of 480 grains) while the avoirdupois pound has 16 ounces (of 437.5 grains). The unit of volume, the gallon , has different values in the United States and in the United Kingdom – the US fluid gallon being about 0.83 imperial gallons and the US dry gallon being about 0.97 imperial ...
Troy weight, avoirdupois weight, and apothecaries' weight are all built from the same basic unit, the grain, which is the same in all three systems. However, while each system has some overlap in the names of their units of measure (all have ounces and pounds), the relationship between the grain and these other units within each system varies.
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.
The confusing variety of definitions and conversions for pounds and ounces is covered elsewhere in a table of pound definitions. To unify all weight systems used by apothecaries, the Irish pharmacopœia of 1850 introduced a new variant of the apothecaries' system which subdivided a new apothecaries' pound of 12 avoirdupois ounces instead of the ...