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Weight/Mass | Convert from pound to hundredweight [short, US] |
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All Weight Conversions Metric Weight Conversions Unit Definition (pound) The pound is a traditional unit of mass or weight. The Romans used a pound (the libra pondo, "pound of weight") divided into 12 ounces. All the countries of western Europe used similar units, divided into 12 or 16 ounces, until the advent of the metric system. 12-ounce pounds were common in Italy and southern France, but in Spain and northern Europe 16-ounce pounds became the norm. The word libra is used for this unit in Italy, Spain, and Portugal; in France it is called the livre. Further north, the Latin word pondo ("weight") is the origin of the names of the English pound, Dutch pond, Danish pund, German pfund, and Russian funt. In England, two different "pound" units became standard. The unit now in general use in the United States is the avoirdupois pound, so-called from a French phrase avoir du poids, literally "goods of weight," indicating simply that the goods were being sold by weight rather than by volume or by the piece. The avoirdupois pound is divided into 16 ounces. By international agreement, one avoirdupois pound is equal to exactly 453.592 37 grams; this is exactly 175/144 = 1.215 28 troy pounds. Unit Definition (hundredweight [short, US]) The hundredweight [short, US] (Cwt or cwt) is a traditional unit of weight equal to 1/20 ton. The hundredweight is the English version of a commercial unit used throughout Europe and known in other countries as the quintal or the zentner. In general, this unit is larger than 100 pounds avoirdupois, so to fit the European market the hundredweight was defined in England as 112 pounds avoirdupois (about 50.8023 kilograms) rather than 100 pounds. This definition apparently dates from about the middle of the 1300's. In the United States, where the currency was decimalized and there wasn't so much need to align the unit with the quintal and zentner, the hundredweight came to equal exactly 100 pounds (about 45.3592 kilograms). The U.S. hundredweight seems to have been invented by merchants around 1840. To distinguish the two hundredweight units, the British version is often called the long hundredweight and the American is called the short hundredweight or cental. The C in the symbol is of course the Roman numeral 100.
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