Hundredweight

The hundredweight (abbreviation: cwt), formerly also known as the centum weight or quintal, is an English, imperial, and US customary unit of weight or mass of various values. Its present value continues to differ between the American and imperial systems. The two values are distinguished in American English as the "short" and "long" hundredweight and in British English as the "cental" and the "hundredweight".

• The short hundredweight or cental of 100 lbs. (45.359237 kg) is used in the US^[1] and Canada.
• The long or imperial hundredweight of 8 stone (112 lbs. or 50.802345 kg) sees informal use in the imperial system^[2] but was banned from commercial use in 1985.^[3]

Under both conventions, there are 20 hundredweight in a ton, producing a "short ton" of 2000 lbs. and a "long ton" of 2240 lbs.

History

The hundredweight has had many different values. In England in around 1300, it was legally defined as 13½ stone of 8 Tower pounds each, making 108 lbs.^[4] A 1350 statute of Edward III adopted the 14-pound stone for use in the wool trade.^[5] Subsequently, the Tower pound was dropped in favor of the troy and then avoirdupois pounds. The Weights and Measures Act that established the present imperial system in 1824 revoked the former legislation concerning stone and excluded the unit, leaving its customary use to vary from 5, 8, and 14 lbs.^[6] The Weights and Measures Act of 1835 included only the 14-pound stone and established the present imperial hundredweight of 112 lbs.^[7] The Weights and Measures Act of 1985 banned the use of measures by "cental", "hundredweight", or "quintal" in trade.^[3]

The stone was never a common unit in the Americas and both the United States and Canada came to use the term "hundredweight" to refer to a unit of 100 lbs. This measure was specifically banned from British use—upon risk of being sued for fraud—by the Weights and Measures Act of 1824 but, in 1879, the measure was legalized under the name "cental" in response to legislative pressure from British merchants importing wheat and tobacco from the United States.^[8]

Use

The short hundredweight is commonly used in the US in the sale of livestock and some cereal grains^[9] and oilseeds, paper, and concrete additives and on some commodities in futures exchanges^[10]

A few decades ago, commodities weighed in terms of long hundredweight included cattle, cattle fodder, fertilizers, coal, some industrial chemicals, other industrial materials, and so on. However, since increasing metrication in most English-speaking countries, it is now less used. Church bell ringers use the unit commonly,^[11] although church bell manufacturers are increasingly moving over to the metric system.^[12]

Older blacksmiths' anvils are often stamped with a three-digit number indicating their total weight in hundredweight, quarter-hundredweight, and pounds. Thus, an anvil stamped "1.1.8" will weigh 148 lbs (112 lbs + 28 lbs + 8 lbs).^[13]

See also

• The short & long hundred of 100 & 120, respectively
• Hundred, the medieval unit of measure

References