Hundredweight
Mass · Also called: cwt, cental
That is
50.8 kg
1 hundredweight (long)
The other way round: 1 t is 19.6841 hundredweight.
- Period: medieval to the 20th century
- Region: the UK
- Goods: coal, cement, agricultural produce
Values
| Value | That is | Period | Used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| long | 50.8 kg | medieval to the 20th century | coal, cement, agricultural produce · the UK |
| short (cental) | 45.36 kg | 19th century onwards | grain · the US, and British grain markets |
What the unit was used for
The British hundredweight of 112 pounds plainly does not weigh a hundred pounds, and the discrepancy is the whole point of it.
Britain chose to keep the unit divisible into whole stones and quarters, so 112 pounds is 8 stone and 4 quarters, and 20 hundredweight make a ton of 2240 pounds.
The United States took the simpler road with a hundredweight of 100 pounds, and there the unmodified words hundredweight and ton mean the 100-pound and 2000-pound units, with the British ones labelled long or gross.
Britain did try a 100-pound unit under the name cental, which turns up in 19th-century grain markets and is still listed in Part VI of Schedule 1 to the Weights and Measures Act 1985.
The long hundredweight was how coal, cement and fertiliser were delivered in Britain within living memory.
In the system
1 long hundredweight = 112 pounds = 8 stone = 4 quarters = 1/20 long ton