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A statute of Henry VIII (24 Hen 8 c. 3) made avoirdupois weights mandatory. In 1588 Queen Elizabeth increased the weight of the avoirdupois pound to 7000 grains and added the troy grain to the avoirdupois weight system. Prior to 1588, the "part" (1 ⁄ 16) was the smallest unit in the avoirdupois weight system. In the 18th century, the "part ...
The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in both the British imperial and United States customary systems of measurement.Various definitions have been used; the most common today is the international avoirdupois pound, which is legally defined as exactly 0.453 592 37 kilograms, and which is divided into 16 avoirdupois ounces. [1]
Troy weight is a system of units of mass that originated in the Kingdom of England in the 15th century [ 1 ] and is primarily used in the precious metals industry. The troy weight units are the grain, the pennyweight (24 grains), the troy ounce (20 pennyweights), and the troy pound (12 troy ounces). The troy grain is equal to the grain unit of ...
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.
Chart showing the relationships of weight measures. The Avoirdupois, Troy and Apothecary systems of weights all shared the same finest unit, the grain; however, they differ as to the number of grains there are in a dram, ounce and pound. This grain was legally defined as the weight of a grain seed from the middle of an ear of barley.
A grain is a unit of measurement of mass, and in the troy weight, avoirdupois, and apothecaries' systems, equal to exactly 64.798 91 milligrams. It is nominally based upon the mass of a single ideal seed of a cereal. From the Bronze Age into the Renaissance, the average masses of wheat and barley grains were part of the legal definitions of ...
The dram (alternative British spelling drachm; apothecary symbol ʒ or ℨ; [a] abbreviated dr) [4][5]: C-6–C-7 [6] is a unit of mass in the avoirdupois system, and both a unit of mass and a unit of volume in the apothecaries' system. [5] It was originally both a coin and a weight in ancient Greece. [7] The unit of volume is more correctly ...