On Fri, 12 Aug 1994 john.bartholomew@amail.amdahl.com wrote:
> Re:- question, why 112 lbs equals one hundredweight.
>
> Being a transplant from jolly old, I thought everyone knew ...
> 4 quarters in 1 cwt
> I sure remember having to learn the following....
> 16oz=1 lb, 14 lbs=1 stone, 2 st (stone) or 28 lbs=1 quarter
> 4 qtrs (quarters)= 1 hundredweight, 20 cwt=1 ton ( I think actually,tonne)
> hence 112 lbs=1 cwt and 2240lbs= 1 ton
>
That's fine as far as it goes, but it does not really explain why a
hundredweight is 112 pounds. You have to dig deeper. Long, long ago, in
days of yore as it were, King Percival the Strange (who most historians
totally neglect) set about devising a rational (by his standards) set of
weights and measures for his island realm. When it was time to enshrine a
hundredweight standard, his eye (he had only one) fell upon a stack of
pound cakes recently completed for a royal festival. He misunderstood
completely the meaning of "pound cake," which we all know means a pound of
butter was used per cake, and assumed each of them *weighed* a pound. He
therefore gathered 100 of the pound cakes, and put them in the royal
standards vault as the standard hundredweight. The cakes, which
originally weighed well over a pound each, dried to a more or less uniform
weight of 1.12 pounds.
Thus, a hundredweight was forever set as 112 pounds.
How does one explain a 14 pound stone? I don't know, it may simply be
bizarre.
Trivia question: what english measure is approximately equal to 1/3 inch?
Obligatory britcar content: In his prime, Sterling Moss is reputed to
have lost 14 pounds during a long hot race in which cockpit temperatures
were well over 100 (Fahrenheit). This proves the old adage, a rolling
Moss gathers no stone.
Ray Gibbons Dept. of Molecular Etymology, Weights, and Measures
Univ. of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, VT
gibbons@northpole.med.uvm.edu (802) 656-8910
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