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Posted 03/29/2011 08:54 am
Quote:
Precious metal is troy: 24 grains to the dwt, 20 dwt/480 grains to the oz, 12 oz/5760 grains to the #.
Precious metal is troy: 24 grains to the dwt, 20 dwt/480 grains to the oz, 12 oz/5760 grains to the #.
This ties in to coins.
You may have heard the term "pound sterling". A British monetary £ was originally 1# of silver. A pennyweight (dwt) was the weight of a silver penny. As noted above, there are 20 dwt to an ounce, 12 ounces to the #, so 240 dwt to the pound.
For reasons unknown, instead of making 20 pence (plural of penny) a denomination with an ounce of silver, and 12 of those making a pound sterling, they made 12 pence be a shilling, with 20 shillings to the pound.
The end result is the same. There are 240 pence, each weighing a dwt, to the monetary £, and 240 penny weights to the weight #. Once you understand this, the old lsd (pound, shilling, pence abbreviations) makes a lot more sense.
Trivial 1: Ancient coins included silver pence, too. The were called denarius, which is where the d of lsd came from.
Trivial 2: When the US went to the small size cent in copper, it took a lot more copper than silver to make a cent/penny. As a result, a copper cent weighs almost exactly 2 dwt.
