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The stone or stone weight (abbreviation: st.) [1] is an English and British imperial unit of mass equal to 14 avoirdupois pounds (6.35 kg). [ nb 1 ] The stone continues in customary use in the United Kingdom and Ireland for body weight .
It was usually 28 pounds, or two stone. [33] The tod, however, was not a national standard and could vary by English shire, ranging from 28 to 32 pounds. [33] In addition to the traditional definition in terms of pounds, the tod has historically also been considered to be 1 ⁄ 13 of a sack, 1 ⁄ 26 of a sarpler, [33] or 1 ⁄ 9 of a wey. [32]
A sack of coal was 16 stone, or 224 pounds (102 kg), while the weight of a sack of wool depended on who was selling it. A sack of grower's wool was 3 + 1 ⁄ 4 hundredweight or 364 pounds (165 kg), whereas a sack of dealer's wool was considerably lighter, at 240 pounds (109 kg). [11]
The definition of units of weight above a pound differed between the customary and the imperial system - the imperial system employed the stone of 14 pounds, the hundredweight of 8 stone [Note 6] and the ton of 2240 pounds (20 hundredweight), while the customary system of units did not employ the stone but has a hundredweight of 100 pounds and ...
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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.
The weights are in denominations of 7 pounds (corresponding to a unit known as the clip or wool-clip), 14 pounds (stone), 56 pounds (4 stone) and 91 pounds (1 ⁄ 4 sack or woolsack). [ 18 ] [ 19 ] The 91-pound weight is thought to have been commissioned by Edward III in conjunction with the statute of 1350, while the other weights are thought ...
However, apothecaries' weight has now been superseded by the metric system.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.