Off the top of my head, ...
The long ton (2240 lb) was used in American break bulk shipping for many
years. Sometimes it was called the longshoreman's ton. I believe that
when non-metric values are given in tons for ship displacements it is
still the long ton that is meant.
Caveat: my memory may have this entirely wrong, but perhaps this will
suggest further research.
Jim
John M. Steele wrote:
I don't know if this article is authoritative; it lacks references, but,
certainly, most of it is accurate.
It implies we adopted the 2000 lb ton from the UK and they changed to
the long ton, somewhere between the American Revolution and the 1824
creation of Imperial. (mostly due to standardizing the stone at 14 lb)
http://physics.info/system-english/
stone A unit usually used for bulk agricultural commodities and legally
defined as equal to 14 pounds. In practice, however, the weight of a
stone varied with the article weighed.
* glass: 5 lbs
* meat, fish: 8 lbs
* sugar, spices: 8 lbs
* wax: 12 lbs
* cheese: 16 lbs
* hemp: 32 lbs
The word stone is both the singular and plural form of the unit (one
stone, two stone, three stone).
hundredweight Logically, a hundredweight should be a hundred of
something — a hundred pounds would be my educated guess. This was the
choice made in England way, way back and adopted by the United States at
its founding. But what if you prefer the stone over the pound as your
basic unit of weight? This was the case in England soon after the
Americans left the Empire. The nearest multiple of a stone greater than
a hundredweight is 8 stone or 112 pounds. This became the new
hundredweight in England. To distinguish between the two, the original
100 pound hundredweight is called a short hundredweight or a cental
while the newer 112 pound hundredweight is called a long hundredweight.
ton The origin of this word is the Middle English /tun/ — a big
container. Later the word also came to mean the capacity of such a
container and was used as a unit of both volume and weight. The volume
unit was not as popular as the weight unit except in the railroad
business. The original Middle English /tun/ was about as big as a modern
boxcar. (Or was the modern boxcar about as big as a Middle English
/tun/?) Eventually it was decided that a ton would be a good name for
two thousand pounds. When the hundredweight changed in England, so too
did the ton. America kept the unit at 2000 pounds while the English
changed the unit to 2240 pounds. (2240 pounds is 160 stone, by the way.)
As with the hundredweight, the American ton is called a short ton while
the English ton is called a long ton. The similarly sized SI unit of
1000 kg is called a tonne in England or a metric ton in the United
States. To misquote George Bernard Shaw, "England and America are two
countries divided by a common unit system."
--- On *Sat, 10/10/09, Michael Payne /<[email protected]>/* wrote:
From: Michael Payne <[email protected]>
Subject: [USMA:45993] Short Ton
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Date: Saturday, October 10, 2009, 3:37 PM
I've been googling around looking for when the Short Ton was adopted
by the United States. I've not had much luck, anyone have any idea?
Mike Payne
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
