Talk:Hundredweight

Introduction date[edit]

Any source for the introduction-date claim in "a hundredweight is defined as 100 pounds. This equals 45.359 kg. This unit was introduced in the late 1800s."?

I'd suggest that it was much earlier (by centuries), will look for more on that. Didn't the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824 have something to do with the virtual disappearance from this short hundredweight from British usage? Gene Nygaard 10:08, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I removed the "Citation required" tag when I added a link to the word "differs". Martinvl (talk) 09:12, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson's 1790 report to the House of Representatives, Plan for establishing uniformity in the Coinage, Weights, and Measures of the United States, he calls the short hundredweight a kental, saying for the unit in his proposed decimal system based on the foot that his redefined kental would be "about 4/10 less than the English kental of 100 lbs. avoirdupois".
Gene Nygaard 13:17, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In Hutchinson's Encyclopaedia we have
hundredweight Imperial unit of mass, equal to 112 lb (50.8 kg). It is sometimes called the long hundredweight, to distinguish it from the short hundredweight or cental, equal to 100 lb (45.4 kg).
Gene Nygaard 13:30, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Coal and certainly building materials are actually sold in 25Kg quantities due to health and safety.

Hundredweight[edit]

The entry for 'hundred' in R.E.Zupko "A dictionary of Weights and Measures for the British Islands" gives hundredweight under the entry of 'hundred'. One finds 100, C, used indifferently for cwt, eg a quote under 'wey' gives the wey as 300 li (ie lb), each C being v score xii, that is, 336 lbs. C of six scores (eg xi xx) are also used.

The practice is that a cwt. is a hundred pounds, according to the meanings of 'hundred' and 'weight', although the cwt might not be a hundred.

100 lbs corresponds to the new style or short hundred of five scores. 108 lbs corresponds to 100 lb of the french livre. 120 lbs corresponds to what Gwilt calls the 'long hundred weight' (three words), being the weight of a long-hundred of pounds. Such was used for things like iron.

A cwt of 112 lbs suggests a pound of either 9800 or 6533 grains troy (according to the value of hundred). Alternately, given that a clove is a sixteenth (as 16 clavis (fingers) make the foot in roman practice), the notion is that 120 is rounded down to 112 to make the clove an integer number of pounds.

In the Germany, in the period before metric, a ton of 2240 lbs or 1120 kg was also known, which divides as follows: (the corresponding cwt or zentner is 56 kg)

 56 kg = 100 * 560.02 grams  (Austrian pounds)
       = 112 * 500.00 grams  (Metric pounds)
       = 120 * 466.711 grams (Prussian pound)

  a gram is 15.43236 grains (troy).

--Wendy.krieger (talk) 11:08, 19 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Improvement opportunity?[edit]

Just read this. Not clear. US woven across UK descriptions and history only starting in late period. References to lbs where kg would help clarify too. Could use a table perhaps showing equivalence including global kg, ton and tonne difference. An 'etc' where detail could be provided. 2A00:23C7:C12A:9001:679D:1A71:F7E2:B8C8 (talk) 06:30, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]