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This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original article was at Pound (mass)#Troy pound. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with the Units of Measurement Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under Creative Commons License see Wikia:Licensing. |
A troy pound is equal to 12 troy ounces and to 5,760 grains, that is exactly 373.2417216 grams.[1] Troy weights were used in England by apothecaries and jewellers.
Troy weight probably takes its name from the French market town of Troyes in France where English merchants traded at least as early as the early 9th century.[2]
The troy pound is no longer in general use or legal unit for trade. In the United Kingdom, the use of the troy pound was abolished on 6 January 1879 by the WMA Weights and Measures Act of 1878, though the troy ounce was retained. The troy ounce is still used for measurements of precious metals such as gold, silver, and platinum, and sometimes gems such as opals.
Most measurements of the mass of precious metals using pounds refer to troy pounds, even though it is not always explicitly stated that this is the case. Some notable exceptions are:
- Encyclopædia Britannica which uses either avoirdupois pounds or troy ounces, likely never both in the same article, and
- the mass of Tutankhamun's sarcophagus lid. This is 110 kilograms. It is often stated to have been 242 or 243 avoirdupois pounds but sometimes, much less commonly, it is stated as 296 (troy) pounds.
References[]
- ↑ United States National Bureau of Standards. "Appendix C of NIST Handbook 44, Specifications, Tolerances, and Other Technical Requirements for Weighing and Measuring Devices, General Tables of Units of Measurement". p. C-12. http://ts.nist.gov/WeightsAndMeasures/Publications/upload/h4402_appenc.pdf.
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
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