The hundredweight (abbreviation: cwt), formerly also known as the centum weight or quintal, is a British imperial and United States customary unit of weight or mass. Its value differs between the United States customary and British imperial systems. The two values are distinguished in American English as the short and long hundredweight and in British English as the cental and imperial hundredweight.
Under both conventions, there are 20 hundredweight in a ton, producing a "short ton" of 2,000pounds (907.2 kg) and a "long ton" of 2,240pounds (1,016 kg).
The United States and Canada came to use the term "hundredweight" to refer to a unit of 100 pounds (45.36kg). This measure was specifically banned from British use—upon risk of being sued for fraud—by the Weights and Measures Act 1824, but in 1879 the measure was legalised under the name "cental" in response to legislative pressure from British merchants importing wheat and tobacco from the United States into the United Kingdom.[3]
A few decades ago,[timeframe?] commodities weighed in terms of long hundredweight included cattle, cattle fodder, fertilizers, coal, some industrial chemicals, other industrial materials, and so on. However, since the increasing usage of the metric system in most English-speaking countries, it is now used to a far lesser extent. Church bell ringers use the unit commonly,[6] although church bell manufacturers are increasingly moving over to the metric system [citation needed].
Older blacksmiths' anvils are often stamped with a three-digit number indicating their total weight in hundredweight, quarter-hundredweight (28lb (13kg), abbreviated qr), and pounds. Thus, an anvil stamped "1.1.8" will weigh 148lb (67kg) (112lb (51kg) + 28lb (13kg) + 8lb (3.6kg)).[7]
The same three part scheme is used for church bells (formatted cwt–qr–lb).[6]
In Europe outside British Isles, a centum or quintal was never defined in terms of British units. Instead, it was based on the kilogramme or former customary units. It is usually abbreviated q. It was 50kg (110lb) in Germany, 48.95kg (108lb) in France, 56kg (123lb) in Austria, etc. The unit was phased out or metricized after the introduction of the metric system in the 1790s, being occasionally retained in informal use up to the mid-20th century.[10]
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Long_hundredweight, and is written by contributors.
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