Pound (unit)

“ In England as well as elsewhere in Europe two pound-units have prevailed from mediæval times, a light pound for weighing articles of high value and a heavy pound for weighing articles of low value. Many of the lighter pounds used in the Latin States are variations of the old Roman standards, others are of Saxon origin, and still others of more recent date. The Italian pounds have varied from 300 to 350 grams, the average being about the weight of the old Roman pound of 325.8 grams. ”

“ Pound′age, a charge or tax made on each pound; Pound′al, a name sometimes used for the absolute foot pound second unit of force, which will produce in one pound a velocity of one foot per second, after acting for one second; Pound′-cake, a sweet cake whose ingredients are measured by weight; Pound′er, he who has, or that which weighs, many pounds—used only after a number, as a 12-pounder.—adj. Pound′-fool′ish, neglecting the care of large sums in attending to little ones. [A.S. pund—L. pondo, by weight, pondus, a weight—pendĕre, to weigh.] ”

“ The cellar of uniform temperature is best for this also.
487 Let it, then, be established that an ounce is of the weight of a cube of rain water, of one-tenth of a foot; or, rather, that it is the thousandth part of the weight of a cubic foot of rain water, weighed in the standard temperature; that the series of weights of the United States shall consist of pounds, ounces, pennyweights, and grains; whereof
24 grains shall be one pennyweight; 18 pennyweights one ounce; 16 ounces one pound. COINS.
Congress, in 1786, established the money unit at 375.64 troy grains of pure silver. ”

“ The old Saxon pound was the earliest standard of England. It was identical in weight with the old apothecaries’ pound of Germany, and equal to 5,400 of our later Troy grains. The pound sterling was determined from this weight in silver. Henry III., in 1266, decreed the following standards: The sterling, or penny, to weigh equal to thirty-two wheat corns, taken from the middle of the ear; twenty pence, one ounce; twelve ounces, one pound; eight pounds, one gallon of wine, which is the eighth part of a quarter. ”

“ In the Tower there is a standard pound. An English silver penny should weigh 1/240 of this pound and 1/20 of its ounce, and the penny-weight may be divided into 32 aces or little grains. But there is another old-established pound used for all goods but gold and silver, bread and drugs. Our regard for the unity of weight forbids us to describe this pound otherwise than by mentioning that a wine-gallon contains 8 of these pounds weight of wine or of water, that 8 larger gallons each containing 8 pounds, not of wine, but of wheat, make a Bushel ”

“ So that I think it the next way to know the just weight as well of the great pound as of the small.
There is another weight needful to be known, which is the weight of Wardhouse; for so much as they weigh all their dry fish by weight, which weight is the basemere as they of Russia do use, notwithstanding there is another sort in it. The names of those weights are these: the marke pound, the great pound, the wee and the ship pound. The marke pound is to be understood as our pound, and their great is twenty-four of their marke pound; the wee is three great pound; and eight wee is a ship pound. ”

“ The common weight of these halfpence is between four and five to an ounce, suppose five, then three shillings and fourpence will weigh a pound, and consequently twenty shillings will weigh six pound butter weight. Now there are many hundred farmers who pay two hundred pound a year rent. Therefore when one of these farmers comes with his half-year's rent, which is one hundred pound, it will be at least six hundred pound weight, which is three horse load. ”

“ If I am carrying a small weight, for example, and the addition of an ounce is required to make the burden perceptibly heavier to me, two ounces will have to be added in order that I may notice a difference when I carry twice the weight, and a whole pound when I carry sixteen times the weight. ”

“ To the common mass of the people the use of weights is in the market and the shops. The article weighed is to be carried home for the daily subsistence of the family. Subdivisions of the pound, the half, the quarter of a pound, are often necessary to conciliate the wants and the means of the neediest portion of the people, that portion to whom the justice of weight and measure is a necessity of life, and to whom it is one of the most sacred duties of the legislator to secure that justice, so far as it can be secured by the operation of human institutions. ”

“ The range in different male adults is from 34 to 46 ounces of so-called solid food, and from 70 to 90 ounces of water in some form, taken with and without solid food. For adult females, the average is from 3 to 5 ounces less. For children and youths, proportionally, more in the inverse ratio to age, 0.8 to 0.6 ounces for each pound weight of the body.
If individuals are undergoing great exertion they require more food, and, if they can obtain it, the needful increase is especially in the nitrogenous and fat foods. ”

“ I look upon every man now az strikly honest, who kan prove it. I want honesty weighed out to me just az i do mi sassage, 16 ounces tew the pound. Honesty that lacks an ounce in every pound aint worth a kuss. ”

“ Thus a piece of artillery with 14 c. 3 q. 16 lb., is 14 hundred, 3 quarters, and 16 pounds.
Pr. signifies pounder. Thus 24 pr. is a 24 pounder.
T. C. qr. lb. signifies tons, hundreds, quarters, pounds; and 28 lb. is one quarter: 4 qr. is one centner, or 112 pounds; and 20 C. or cwt. is one ton.
lb. oz. dr. means, pounds, ounces and drams: 16 dr. is one ounce, and 16 oz. is one pound avoirdupois.
lb. oz. dwts. gr. is pounds, ounces, penny-weights, and grains; of which 24 gr. make one penny-weight, 20 dwt. make one ounce, and 12 oz. one pound of troy-weight. ”

“ England and America will adopt the metric system at nearly the same time; neither alone can get along without it.
Early in the thirteenth century it was enacted under Henry III. that there should be uniformity in the weights and measures throughout the realm, and a little later it was determined that measures of capacity should be based upon weights. Soon afterwards weights were established upon the weight of grains of wheat, as follows: 32 wheat grains = 1 penny (pennyweight) ; 20 pence = 1 ounce; 12 ounces = 1 pound; 8 pounds = 1 gallon; 8 gallons = 1 London bushel ”

“ The great pound is just two small pounds; they call the great weight by the name of beasemar, and the small they call the skallawaight. With this small weight they weigh their silver coins, of which the Emperor hath commanded to put to every small pound three rubbles of silver; and with the same weight they weigh all grocery wares, and almost all other wares, which come into the land, except those which they weigh by the pode, as hops, salt, iron, lead, tin, and batrie, with divers others. Notwithstanding, they used to weigh batrie more often by the small weight than by the great. ”

“ When there is no weight on the spring, the place to which the indicator points is marked zero. When these scales are manufactured, a pound weight is placed so that it pulls on the spring and the indicator is pulled down to another place, and this is marked one. Scales are thus marked for the number of pounds they are to weigh. The spaces between the pounds marked are divided into equal divisions, such as sixteenths which indicates ounces. These scales cannot be relied on for accuracy, for springs stretch or become weaker as they are used. ”

“ Supposing the joint to weigh six pounds, at thirty cents, and that one-third of the weight is so treated as to become perfectly useless, we throw away sixty cents. Of a piece of beef at twenty-five cents a pound, fifty cents' worth is often lost in bone, fat, and burnt skin. ”

“ By the time the bone, scraps, skin and dirty pieces are cut away from a portion of meat representing the rations of a section calculated at three pounds per man, and this again is subdivided into each man's little chunk, it will be found that what was originally considered as three pounds has dwindled to a pound-and-a-half or less. ”

“ They are four pound fifteen each.’
‘But I read that they were only ten shillings originally, and that they had been falling.’
‘Yes, they have been falling for months. But they were as high as ten pounds once. They are down at four pound fifteen now.’
‘Why on earth could the paper not say so?’
‘When a fraction is used, it always means a fraction of a pound.’
‘Good heavens! ”

“ A decimal series of weights from the pound upwards is perfectly lawful. It may be confidently expected that it will before long replace for most purposes the stone and long-hundredweight series imposed in the fourteenth century, and fought against ever since.
Apothecaries’ weight, abolished by the Medical Council half a century ago, still lingers in the Board of Trade list of standards. Mint-weight is still on the Troy system. The half-crown is one grain less than an Imperial half-ounce. It may be hoped that it, and other silver coins, will before long be brought exactly to that standard. ”

“ When he comes to large weights, does he not commonly abjure the 1,000 kilos and write one tonne? When he comes to domestic weights the kilogramme is found too large; the half of this, the practical equivalent of the pound, is wanted. ”

“ Avoirdupois weight is used for all commodities except the precious metals, gems, and medicines. The pound avoirdupois, which is equal to 7000 grains troy, or 453·54 grammes, is divided into 16 ounces, and the ounce into 16 drams. ”

“ One often hears of persons that “don’t eat more than a bird,” and stout people are invariably p. 127accredited with being small eaters. It would astonish these persons to find that they consume in blissful ignorance three or four pounds a day. I would recommend every corpulent person to purchase a set of cheap scales capable of weighing accurately one, two, four, and eight ounces (an ounce is a word that conveys a diminutive impression, yet eight of them constitute half a pound) ; these can be procured at any ironmonger’s at a cost of two or three shillings. ”

“ All units must be assumed to be equal in that other respect; and this is never practically true, for one actual pound weight is not exactly equal to another, nor one mile's length to another; a nicer balance, or more accurate measuring instruments, would always detect some difference. ”

“ If now a weight of 1 pound is suspended from the bar at some point, say 12, the balance is disturbed, and the bar swings about the point F as a center. The balance can be regained by suspending an equivalent weight at the opposite end of the bar, or by applying a 2-pound weight at a point 3 inches to the left of F. In the latter case a force of 1 pound actually balances a force of 2 pounds, but the 1-pound weight is twice as far from the point of suspension as is the 2-pound weight. The small weight makes up in distance what it lacks in magnitude. ”

“ Being determined to judge for myself, I counted personally the number of four-pound loaves in the baker’s window, which amounted to thirty-six, while there were twenty-five two-pound loaves on the shelves, to say nothing of fancy-bread and flour ad libitum. But let us take the loaves alone,
which, if divided amongst a family of fifteen, would give 12 pounds and 14 fractions of a pound to each individual. ”

“ It is not an uncommon thing for college crews to reduce their weights, by a month’s training, twelve pounds per man. A prize fighter will often come down thirty or forty pounds in [143] preparing for a contest. An instance is cited of a student, who, after carefully weighing himself, sat down to a fifty-five pound rowing-weight, pulled forty-five full strokes a minute for twenty minutes, then, with the same clothing as before, weighed himself, and found he had lost one pound. ”

“ When weighing for gross, the fractions of a pound are discarded; when weighing for tares, the pounds above the actual weight are written. The greatest loss that can occur by this method, on one package, is 1 pound 14 ounces of Tea. It (this greatest loss) must always occur when the gross is 1 ounce short of a pound, and the tare 1 ounce more than the pound. ”

“ For instance, if we drop a pound weight a foot on to a scale balance, the work it does is equal to one foot-pound. But if we place it on the scale gently, it will just balance one pound on the other side. ”

“ Of course if you can give any sort of idea where I can get that pound I shall be very thankful. Unfortunately, in this case, five shillings would be no good, and even ten would be no good, strange though it may seem. Only a pound is any use. ”

“ A power of one pound at P being moved from P to P′, will carry a weight of ten pounds from W to W′. But in this case it ought not to be said, that a lesser weight moves a greater, for it is172 not difficult to show, that the total expenditure of force in the motion of one pound from P to P′ is exactly the same as in the motion of ten pounds from W to W′. If the space P P′ be ten inches, the space W W′ will be one inch. A weight of one pound is therefore moved through ten successive inches, and in each inch the force expended is that which would be sufficient to move one pound through one inch. ”

“ How much of it ought each to have? Each one ought to gain as much for £1 as the others. Now, since there are 250 + 130 + 45, or 425 pounds embarked, which gain £1000, for each pound there is a gain of £1000/424. ”

“ Experience of fattening gives two pounds per day, or fourteen pounds per week, as what can be attained on an average, and for a length of time. If we considered half a pound per day as fat, which is not more than probable, there will be one and a half pounds for flesh, which, reckoned as dry material, [372] will be about one third of a pound, which is assimilated in increase of fibrin, and represents only one and one third to two pounds of substances rich in protein, beyond what is required for her maintenance. ”