Quintal

A quintal was an old Spanish unit of mass, which was equivalent to:

• 100 pounds Castilian46,0093 kg.

The quintal had as a fraction the arroba, which was the fourth part of a quintal (11.5 kg).

When the metric system began to be adopted in many places, the quintal was rounded to 100 kg, and later the metric quintal was defined as:

1 metric fifth (qqm) = 100 kg

Under these values it is still used in some South American countries, where the quintal is frequently used in the markets, especially for the purchase of flour, sugar and other foods. In Venezuela, mainly in the plain, in transactions related to cattle sales, the arroba is used as a unit of weight equivalent not to 25 pounds but to 25 kg. Thus, an animal weighing 250 kg is said to weigh 10 arrobas and if it weighs 500 kg it has 20 arrobas.

International System of Units

The metric quintal is the second decimal multiple of the kilogram and the fifth of the gram. No recognized symbol.

Currently, its use has been practically limited to the rural world to weigh crops.

Equivalences:

• 100 000 grams
• 10 000 decays
• 1 00 hectograms
• 100 kilograms
• 10 miriagrams
• 0.1 metric tons

Anglo-Saxon system

U.S. Hundredweight (Short Hundredweight)

The US quintal is called short hundredweight in English and equals 45.359237 kg, plus:

• 700 000 grains
• 25 600 avoirdupois
• 1600 ounces avoirdupois
• 100 pounds avoirdupois
• 4 arrobas
• 0.2 short rooms
• 0.05 short tons

British hundredweight (long hundredweight)

The British hundredweight, called the long hundredweight in English, equals 50.80234544 kg, plus:

• 784 000 grains
• 28 672 dracmas avoirdupois
• 1792 ounces avoirdupois
• 112 pounds avoirdupois
• 8 stones
• 0.2 long rooms
• 0.05 long tons

With the adoption of the metric system in the UK, the long hundredweight became obsolete. These are all approximations, not exact.