Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 .
However, apothecaries' weight has now been superseded by the metric system.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.
From 1833 the rupee and tolā weight was fixed at 180 grains, i.e. 11.66382 grams. Hence the weight of 1 maund increased to 37.324224 kilogram. [3] Traditionally one maund represented the weight unit for goods which could be carried over some distance by porters or pack animals.
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 ...
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 ...
From the time of Offa King of Mercia (8th century) until 1526 the Saxon pound, also known as the moneyers' pound (and later known as the Tower pound) was the fundamental unit of weight (by Offa's law, one pound of silver, by weight, was subdivided into 240 silver pennies, hence (in money) 240 pence – twenty shillings – was known as one pound).
Many European languages have come to translate both the British hundredweight (8 stone or 112 pounds [50.80 kg]) and the American hundredweight (100 pounds [45.36 kg]), as their cognate form of quintal or centner.