grain

A grain is a unit of measurement of mass, and in the troy weight, avoirdupois, and apothecaries' systems, equal to exactly . It is nominally based upon the mass of a single ideal seed of a cereal. From the Bronze Age into the Renaissance, the average masses of wheat and barley grains were part of the legal definitions of units of mass. Expressions such as "thirty-two grains of wheat, taken from the middle of the ear" appear to have been ritualistic formulas, essentially the premodern equivalent of legal boilerplate. Another source states that it was defined such that 252.458 units would balance of distilled water at an ambient air-water pressure and temperature of and respectively. Another book states that Captain Henry Kater, of the British Standards Commission, arrived at this value experimentally. The grain was the legal foundation of traditional English weight systems, and is the only unit that is equal throughout the troy, avoirdupois, and apothecaries' systems of mass. The unit was based on the weight of a single grain of barley, considered equivalent to grains of wheat. The fundamental unit of the pre-1527 English weight system known as Tower weights, was a different sort of grain known as the "wheat grain". The Tower wheat grain was defined as exactly . Since the implementation of the international yard and pound agreement of 1 July 1959, the grain or troy grain (symbol: gr) measure has been defined in terms of units of mass in the International System of Units as precisely . One gram is thus approximately equivalent to . The unit formerly used by jewellers to measure pearls, diamonds, and other precious stones, called the jeweller's grain or pearl grain, is equal to . The grain was also the name of a traditional French unit equal to . In both British Imperial units and United States customary units, there are precisely 7,000 grains per avoirdupois pound, and 5,760 grains per troy pound or apothecaries' pound. It is obsolete in the United Kingdom and, like most other non-SI units, it has no basis in law and cannot be used in commerce.