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The only troy weight in widespread use is the British Imperial troy ounce and its American counterpart. Both are based on a grain of 0.06479891 gram (exact, by definition), with 480 grains to a troy ounce (compared with 437 + 1 ⁄ 2 grains for an ounce avoirdupois). The British Empire abolished the 12-ounce troy pound in the 19th century.
At the time of the 1702 London Mint Assay by Sir Isaac Newton, the silver content of British coinage was defined to be one troy ounce of sterling silver for 62 pence, or 502 mg per penny. Therefore, the value of the monetary pound sterling was equivalent to only 3.87 troy ounces (120 g) of sterling silver. This was the standard from 1601 to 1816.
The weight shown was the fine silver content in each case. This meant that the total weight of these coins could be higher due to the addition, especially of copper. However, their currency value , which corresponded to their real value, only depended on the fine silver content, which resulted from the interplay between the coin base weight and ...
In the Middle Ages, an English penny's weight was literally, as well as monetarily, 1 ⁄ 20 of an ounce and 1 ⁄ 240 of a pound of sterling silver. At that time, the pound unit in use in England was the Tower pound, equal to 7,680 Tower grains (also known as wheat grains). The medieval English pennyweight was thus equal to 32 Tower grains.
The weight of the English penny was fixed at 22 + 1 ⁄ 2 troy grains (about 1.46 grams) by Offa of Mercia, an 8th-century contemporary of Charlemagne; 240 pennies weighed 5,400 grains or a tower pound (different from the troy pound of 5,760 grains). The silver penny was the only coin minted for 500 years, from c. 780 to 1280.
New silver coinage was to be of .925 standard, with silver coins to be minted at 66 shillings to the pound weight. [5] Hence, newly minted sixpences weighed 1 ⁄ 11 troy ounce, equivalent to 43.636 grains or 2.828 grams. The Royal Mint debased the silver coinage in 1920 from 92.5% silver to 50% silver. [6]
For silver crowns, the grade of silver adhered to the long-standing standard (established in the 12th century by Henry II) – the Sterling Silver standard of 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper. This was a harder-wearing alloy, yet it was still a rather high grade of silver.
This pound was progressively replaced by a new pound, based on the weight of 120 silver dirhems of 48 grains. The new pound used a barley-corn grain, rather than a wheat grain. [29] Avoirdupois (goods of weight) refers to those things measured by the lesser but quicker balances: the bismar or auncel, the Roman balance, and the steelyard. The ...