Search results
People also ask
What is imperial system of measurement?
What are imperial units?
What are imperial measurements?
What are the advantages of the imperial system of measurement?
What is the British imperial system?
What is the difference between metric and imperial packaging?
Before we started using metric measurements, we used imperial measurements with feet and pounds. Find out more in this Bitesize Primary KS2 Maths guide.
The imperial system of units, imperial system or imperial units (also known as British Imperial [1] or Exchequer Standards of 1826) is the system of units first defined in the British Weights and Measures Act 1824 and continued to be developed through a series of Weights and Measures Acts and amendments.
The imperial system of measurement is defined as a system of measuring quantities such as length, mass, volume, area, etc in the units that are commonly used in the UK, and other commonwealth countries. The units used in this system include inches, feet, pounds, gallons, tons, fluid ounces, etc.
- Overview
- Early origins
- Establishment of the system
- Weights and measures in the British Imperial System
Imperial units, units of measurement of the British Imperial System, the traditional system of weights and measures used officially in Great Britain from 1824 until the adoption of the metric system beginning in 1965. The United States Customary System of weights and measures is derived from the British Imperial System. Imperial units are now legal...
The British Imperial System evolved from the thousands of Roman, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and customary local units employed in the Middle Ages. Traditional names such as pound, foot, and gallon were widely used, but the values so designated varied with time, place, trade, product specifications, and dozens of other requirements. Early royal standards established to enforce uniformity took the name Winchester, after the ancient capital of Britain, where the 10th-century Saxon king Edgar the Peaceable kept a royal bushel measure and quite possibly others. Fourteenth-century statutes recorded a yard (perhaps based originally on a rod or stick) of 3 feet, each foot containing 12 inches, each inch equaling the length of three barleycorns (employed merely as a learning device since the actual standard was the space between two marks on a yard bar). Units of capacity and weight were also specified. In the late 15th century, King Henry VII reaffirmed the customary Winchester standards for capacity and length and distributed royal standards (physical embodiments of the approved units) throughout the realm. This process was repeated about a century later in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. In the 16th century the rod (5.5 yards, or 16.5 feet) was defined (once again as a learning device and not as a standard) as the length of the left feet of 16 men lined up heel to toe as they emerged from church. By the 17th century usage and statute had established the acre, rod, and furlong at their present values (4,840 square yards, 16.5 feet, and 660 feet, respectively), together with other historic units. The several trade pounds in common use were reduced to just two: the troy pound, primarily for precious metals, and the pound avoirdupois, for other goods sold by weight.
Britannica Quiz
The Weights and Measures Act of 1824 and the Act of 1878 established the British Imperial System on the basis of precise definitions of selected existing units. The 1824 act sanctioned a single imperial gallon to replace the wine, ale, and corn (wheat) gallons then in general use. The new gallon was defined as equal in volume to 10 pounds avoirdupois of distilled water weighed at 62 °F with the barometer at 30 inches, or 277.274 cubic inches (later corrected to 277.421 cubic inches). The two new basic standard units were the imperial standard yard and the troy pound, which was later restricted to weighing drugs, precious metals, and jewels. A 1963 act abolished such archaic measures as the rod and chaldron (a measure of coal equal to 36 bushels) and redefined the standard yard and pound as 0.9144 metres and 0.45359237 kg respectively. The gallon now equals the space occupied by 10 pounds of distilled water of density 0.998859 gram per millilitre weighed in air of density 0.001217 gram per millilitre against weights of density 8.136 grams per millilitre.
While the British were reforming their weights and measures in the 19th century, the Americans were just adopting units based on those discarded by the act of 1824. The standard U.S. gallon is based on the Queen Anne wine gallon of 231 cubic inches and is about 17 percent smaller than the British imperial gallon. The U.S. bushel of 2,150.42 cubic inches, derived from the Winchester bushel abandoned in Britain, is approximately 3 percent smaller than the British imperial bushel. In the British system, units of dry and liquid capacity are the same, while in the United States they differ; the liquid and dry pint in Britain both equal 0.568 cubic decimetre, while the U.S. liquid pint is 0.473 cubic decimetre, and the U.S. dry pint is 0.551 cubic decimetre. British and American units of linear measure and weight are essentially the same. Notable exceptions are the British stone of 14 pounds, which is not used in the United States, and a divergence in definition of the hundredweight (100 pounds in the United States, 112 in Britain) that yields two different tons, the short U.S. ton of 2,000 pounds and the long British ton of 2,240 pounds. In 1959 major English-speaking nations adopted common metric definitions of the inch (2.54 cm), the yard (0.9144 metres), and the pound (0.4536 kg).
A list of British Imperial weights and measures is provided in the table.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jul 22, 2020 · “A system of measurement in use in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries consisting of units such as the inch, the mile and the pound (a unit of weight).” The British Imperial System was the official weights and measures system used in Great Britain from 1824 to 1965.
- Michele Meleen
- Staff Editor
- admin@yourdictionary.com
Sep 17, 2021 · Stone (st), pounds (lb) and ounces (oz) are imperial units used to measure weight. Their equivalent metric units of measurement are grams (g) and kilograms (kg). One stone is equivalent...
The imperial system developed from earlier English units as did the related but differing system of customary units of the United States. The imperial units replaced the Winchester Standards, which were in effect from 1588 to 1825. The system came into official use across the British Empire in 1826.
