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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;jrg79, post: 25487962, member: 161676&quot;]Also speculating here, but they wouldn&#039;t need to have weights in 1/8 grain increments. They could have just picked a sample of 8 coins and weighed them against 95 whole grains.</p><p><br /></p><p>More generally, in reading these old documents, I&#039;m struck by how even up through the mid-19th century, there was this strong tendency to think in terms of fractions (and preferably fractions with nice even denominators) rather than decimally, the opposite of how most people tend to think in 2024. The older specifications were full of things like &quot;one part in 144,&quot; or &quot;four and two-fifths&quot; when probably most of us would write it out (anachronistically, IMO) as 4.80.</p><p><br /></p><p>Which I don&#039;t think is intrinsically any better or worse, but if you&#039;re using an old balance there are clear advantages to using &quot;nice&quot; fractions like 3/8 or 2/3 for specifications; as per my point above, determining if something weighed 13.3127 grains on your scale would take more work.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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