HISTORY OF THE STANDARDS OF WEIGHT. 
757 
^ With which are also kept a pile of flat averdupois weights, from 14 pounds to the 
64th part of a pound.’ 
The comparisons were made with considerable care, the weights being inter- 
changed so as to eliminate the error produced by the inequality of the arms of the 
balance. 
The results, in ounces troy, and grains of which the ounce contains 480, are — 
14 Ib. + l lb. (bell-weights) = 218 oz. 335‘25 grains= 104975*25 grains. 
7 lb. (bell-weight) = 102 oz. 45 grains=49005 grains. 
1 lb. (bell-weight) = 14 oz. 282 grains= 7002 grains. 
1 lb. (flat weight) = 1 lb. (bell-weight) — 2*5 grains=6999*5 grains. 
In the year 1758, a Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to inquire 
into the standards of weight and measure, recommended that the troy pound should 
be made the unit or standard by which the avoirdupois and other weights should be 
regulated. By order of the Committee, three several troy pounds were adjusted with 
great care, under the direction of Mr. Harris, the then Assay Master of the Mint, 
by a mean of a great number of comparisons with the old weights in the Exchequer. 
The details of the comparisons are given at length in the Report of the Committee, 
presented by Lord Carysfort on the 26th of May, 1758. One of these weights (the 
imperial standard troy pound which was destroyed by the burning of the Houses of 
Parliament in 1834) was placed in the custody of the Clerk of the House of Com- 
mons. The bill, however, brought in by Lord Carysfort in 1760 to give effect to the 
recommendations of the Committee, in the pressure of business attending the death 
of George H. and the accession of George HI., and the dissolution of Parliament 
soon following, was not carried through all its stages. 
In the year 1818, Sir Joseph Banks, Sir George Clerk, Mr. Davies Gilbert, 
Dr. W. H, Wollaston, Dr. Thomas Young, and Captain Kater, were appointed 
Commissioners for considering how far it might be practicable to establish a more 
uniform system of weights and measures. In that part of their Report which relates 
to the subject of Weights, they recommend that the Parliamentary standard of 1758 
should remain unaltered : they state that the avoirdupois pound, which has long been 
in general use, though not established by any act of the Legislature, is so nearly 
7000 troy grains, that they recommend that 7000 such troy grains be declared to con- 
stitute a pound avoirdupois : also, that from Sir George Shuckburgh’s weighings 
of a cube, cylinder and sphere in air and in water in 1797, and Captain Kater’s 
measurements of the linear dimensions of the same in 1821, they determined the 
weight of a cubic inch of distilled water, weighed in air by brass weights, at the 
temperature of 62° Fahr., the barometer being at 30 inches, to be equal to 252*458 
grains, of which the Imperial standard troy pound contains 5760. 
The chief recommendations of this Committee passed into law by an Act of Par- 
5 G 2 
