this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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the customary unit for body weight in the UK is, however, the stone https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1+stone+%28unit%29
You replied to the wrong comment.
Yeah, and fractions of that stone? Pounds.
So like 10 stone 5 pounds.
You're right, but also stones are mostly used as an approximate unit of bodyweight in casual conversation, so people would usually say "I'm about 10 and a half stone".
If you're dealing with bodyweight where accuracy matters, like in a medical sense, it's metric anyway. Plenty of people here aren't even sure of how many pounds make up a stone, despite regularly using the latter as a measurement.
I watched a video (Invidious) yesterday detailing the type of coins they used before 1971 in the UK and its empire, and it was actually insane.
1 Pound = 20 Shillings = 240 Pennies, with coins for 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 6 pennies, 1, 2, 2.5, 5 Shillings and banknotes for the Pounds, and each of these coins had 5 or more different names
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/£sd
It kinda made sense for a while. Remember we're looking at this from a modern lense.
240 is very divisible. It's similar to why we chose 360° for a circle, or 24 hours in a day.
It stopped making sense as more and more countries shifted to decimalisation, and machines made extremely quick+accurate division trivial and accessible.