Carleton,
Perhaps you meant "112 lb" instead of "114 lb" for hundredweight (cwt).
A quarter of 112 lb is 28 lb.
I've discovered some early U.S. laws, written in the 1790s before the
U.S. settled on much of anything for its weights and measures. These
laws relate to customs and specify measurements in hundred weights,
pounds, gallons, and bushels well before those units were defined by the
U.S.
Interestingly, both acts define the hundred weight (spelled as two
words) to mean 112 pounds. My childhood education left me with the
impression that at that time (some 150 years later) a hundred weight was
100 pounds. I think that this subsequent divergence in the meaning of
"hundred weight" relates to the distinction between the British ton of
2240 pounds and (in the twentieth century) the American ton of 2000 pounds.
Meanwhile in the last decade of the eighteenth century, Congress was
ignoring, dodging, and stonewalling recommendations by the Executive
Office to define the weights and measures for the U.S. in an expeditious
manner, with preference given in those presidential recommendations to a
decimal system.
Jim
Carleton MacDonald wrote:
On a related note, a couple of weeks ago two new people, middle-aged women,
came to the Washington Cathedral to start learning how to ring the peal
bells. I usually get there early for practice so when I got to the ringing
room I saw that the door at the top of the stairs to the belfry was open so
I went up there. The instructor, British, was showing the women the bells,
how they work, the need to stand clear of them, etc. He then said that the
bells were measured "properly", by which he meant hundredweight (cwt, 114
lb), quarters (qr, 28 lb), and pounds. He also said that where he came
from, people also weighed themselves "properly", in stone and pounds, and
"that's the way it has always been done."
I mentioned that I really only understood the kilogram; he gave me a look,
and the two women responded neutrally.
People have rung peal bells for over 400 years, and back then it was the
rare person who had more than a few years of education. Large numbers to
them were incomprehensible. So people broke things down into a whole range
of named units, each sized so that there would in most cases never be more
than a two-digit number to describe it. To them, 32 cwt 0 qr 4 lb was much
more understandable than 3588 lb. 3588 was just way, way too big a number
to understand. And for a person's weight, 13 st 4 lb was easier to figure
out than 186 lb. Even 186 was just too big. Keep the numbers small, and
the innumerate can figure them out.
And now that this is in the culture - don't you EVER change it. Ever!
(My guess as to why cwt and qr and st never caught on in the USA - somehow
kids as they went through school were able to understand larger numbers. I
may be quite wrong here so the thoughts of others would be good.)
Incidentally, on the bronze plaque in our ringing room, the ten bells are
described by number (1 through 10), note, inscription, who gave each one,
and the weight - in pounds only. (The plaque was made around 1964.) Yet,
when a quarter peal or full peal is recorded in the book, the weight of the
tenor (largest) bell is noted - and it's always in cwt. Tradition.)
Carleton
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Tom Wade
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 08:27
To: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:40115] Re: Hostile reactions to "speaking metric"
> She said - "we all do our own weights in
lbs so I guess that's why we do it for babies".
But do they really ? I thought that people in the UK tended to use
stones and pounds for their weight rather than just pounds. [Reminder
to American readers than 1 stone is 14 pounds]. Even though one unit is
common to both, it is effectively two different systems, one for adults
(using a base 14) and one for children (using base 16).
The real reason they do it this way, is that they have always done it
this way.
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