When I went shopping as a child in the 1940s and 50s, some high street shops were still
using scales that relied on balancing
goods against standard weights. Greengrocers
in particular were still using their old-style scales for heavy goods like potatoes.
The Imperial System of Weights
16 drams = 1 ounce (oz)
16 ounces (oz) = 1 pound
(lb)
14 pounds = 1 stone (not abbreviated)
112 pounds = 1 hundredweight
(cwt)
20 hundredweights = 1 ton
2240 pounds = 1 ton
However a different type of scale was creeping into shops, relying
on compressing a spring:
Shop scales based on compressing a spring underneath
the scale-pan - as seen from the customer's side. The range can be increased
by adding standard weights using the balance principle. Photographed in
the Tilford Rural Life Centre.
With these scales, as goods were placed in the scale-pan, the spring
compressed and swung a pointer round to show the weight. The photo below is
from the customer's side of the shop counter.
The goods being weighed no longer had to weigh simple multiples
of standard weights, as was the case for pricing with the older balancing
scales. However, pricing didn't seem to concern shopkeepers at all. They just
announced the price as if it were obvious. This worried my mother. She said
that she had always been regarded as excelling in mental arithmetic at school,
but there was no way that she could come up with prices so quickly. How
could this be?
I was able to enlighten her when I worked on sales jobs in school holidays.
To understand what was happening, one had to view the scales from the shopkeeper's
side of the counter. Then all became clear, because the customer's and the shopkeeper's
sides were very different.
On the customer's side, all that was visible was a plain background, a pointer
and a scale of weight. So all the customer saw was the weight of a purchase
as indicated by where the pointer stopped its swing.
The shopkeeper's side was very different:
At first glance the
background is a mass of numbers. Closer inspection shows that these numbers
are arranged in arcs where the numbers on any one arc show how how price
increases with weight for a given price per pound. The lowest arc is for the
cheapest price per pound and the top arc is for the most expensive.
The pointer carries its own scale in prices per pound, again with the
cheapest at the bottom and the most expensive at the top.
Detail of the pointer on the shopkeeper's side marked
in prices per pound, where the prices are in the pre-1971 system of
pounds, shillings and pence.
Shop scales based on compressing a spring underneath
the scale pan - as seen from the shopkeeper's side. The range can be increased
by adding standard weights using the balance principle. Photographed in
the Tilford Rural Life Centre.
When the goods to be priced are placed on the scale-pan, the pointer swings
round and stops at a position indicating the weight of the goods. All that
the shopkeeper then has to do is to run his or her eye up the pointer to
find the price per pound at which the goods are being sold, and then note the
corresponding price on the background. underneath. No mental arithmetic is
involved at all.
This website Join me in the 1900s is a contribution to the social history of everyday life in early to mid 20th century Britain, seen through personal recollections and illustrations, with the emphasis on what it was like to live in those times. It is © Pat Cryer.
