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This pound was progressively replaced by a new pound, based on the weight of 120 silver dirhems of 48 grains. The new pound used a barley-corn grain, rather than a wheat grain. [29] Avoirdupois (goods of weight) refers to those things measured by the lesser but quicker balances: the bismar or auncel, the Roman balance, and the steelyard. The ...
See Weight for detail of mass/weight distinction and conversion. Avoirdupois is a system of mass based on a pound of 16 ounces, while Troy weight is the system of mass where 12 troy ounces equals one troy pound. The symbol g 0 is used to denote standard gravity in order to avoid confusion with the (upright) g symbol for gram.
The only troy weight in widespread use is the British Imperial troy ounce and its American counterpart. Both are based on a grain of 0.06479891 gram (exact, by definition), with 480 grains to a troy ounce (compared with 437 + 1 ⁄ 2 grains for an ounce avoirdupois). The British Empire abolished the 12-ounce troy pound in the 19th century.
A table of weights from the secretaries of the different states, showing the number of pounds which their laws recognize as a bushel of different articles, c. 1854. Bushels are now most often used as units of mass or weight rather than of volume.
The avoirdupois pound is legally defined as a measure of mass, [25] but the name pound is also applied to measures of force. For instance, in many contexts, the pound avoirdupois is used as a unit of mass, but in some contexts, the term "pound" is used to refer to "pound-force". The slug is another unit of mass derived from pound-force.
In the Middle Ages, an English penny's weight was literally, as well as monetarily, 1 ⁄ 20 of an ounce and 1 ⁄ 240 of a pound of sterling silver. At that time, the pound unit in use in England was the Tower pound, equal to 7,680 Tower grains (also known as wheat grains). The medieval English pennyweight was thus equal to 32 Tower grains.
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English-speaking countries also used a system of units of fluid measure, or in modern terminology volume units, based on the apothecaries' system. Originally, the terms and symbols used to describe the volume measurements of liquids were the same as or similar to those used to describe weight measurements of solids [33] (for example, the pound by weight and the fluid pint were both referred to ...