We recently made an intriguing discovery while surfing the web at Acorn Central about “Big Ben” in London, England and it weighs in at 13.5 Long Tons. The bell itself is called “Big Ben,” and it was named after Sir Benjamin Hall, the First Commissioner of Works, when the bell was installed in 1859. He oversaw public buildings, including the construction of the clock tower, and was reported to be a very tall and heavy gentleman. During debate in Parliament, ideas were thrown around on what to name the big bell, and someone supposedly said call it “Big Ben” as a joke. Well, guess what…it stuck, and Big Ben is alive and well, but there were some problems from the beginning.
When first installed, the bell cracked after just a few months. Rather than replacing it, engineers rotated the bell and fitted a lighter hammer, giving the chime its distinctive tone. You can see the repairs today by climbing the 334 steps.
If you are a UK resident, you can book tours through your Member of Parliament. Foreign visitors can take a tour, but they are very limited and supervised, so your timing is a key factor if you are visiting London.
The bell has a lot of other interesting facts, like how the clock keeps such exact time (pennies) and how they even got the bell in place using only counterweights and real Horse and human power.
Wait just a second—I’m digressing. I have a question? What exactly is the unit of weight called “Long Ton,” and how is it different from a regular Ton?
Most people hear “ton” and think of weight. In the US, it’s 2,000 pounds. In Britain, it was 2,240 pounds—the long ton. Internationally, a metric ton (tonne) is 1,000 kilograms.
But here’s the surprising part: the word “ton” didn’t originally refer to weight at all. Instead, its origins trace back hundreds of years to the shipping of wine, medieval trade routes, and the way merchants counted barrels aboard sailing ships. Ultimately, the story of the ton is really about how commerce, practicality, and maritime culture have shaped how we measure our Acorn world.
A Barrel Called a “Tun”
To understand the origin of the word ton, we have to travel back to medieval Europe, when international trade moved slowly across oceans in wooden sailing ships.
One of the most valuable commodities in that era was wine. England, in particular, imported enormous quantities of wine from regions like Bordeaux in southwestern France. The wine wasn’t shipped in the small bottles we know today. Instead, it traveled in massive wooden barrels known as tuns.
A tun was a very large cask designed for transport and storage. Each tun typically held about 252 gallons of wine or roughly 2,000 to 2,240 pounds when full.
Because these barrels were so large and standardized, merchants naturally began measuring ships by the number of tuns they could carry. If a ship could hold 100 tuns of wine, it would be described as a 100-ton ship.
Notice something interesting: the term didn’t refer to the ship’s weight. It referred to its cargo capacity, specifically how many giant wine barrels it could transport. Over time, the spelling gradually shifted from tun to ton, but the concept remained tied to shipping capacity.
Trade, Taxes, and Ship Measurements
As maritime trade expanded during the 1500s and 1600s, governments began to realize that ship capacity mattered more than just for commerce. It also mattered for taxation, regulation, and naval logistics. Officials needed a reliable way to estimate how much cargo a vessel could carry without physically filling it with barrels. The solution was to calculate capacity based on the ship’s dimensions.
This led to early tonnage formulas based on measurements such as:
- Length of the ship
- Width (beam)
- Depth of the cargo hold
A simplified version of the formula looked something like the following:
Length × Width × Depth ÷ a constant
The result was an estimate of how many tons the ship could theoretically hold.
This measurement became known as “tons burthen” (sometimes spelled burden). In other words, it represented the ship’s carrying capacity rather than its weight.
Naval powers such as the Royal Navy relied on these measurements to classify ships and estimate their operational capabilities.
The Birth of the Long Ton
While ships were being measured by cargo capacity, another system of measurement was developing on land. In traditional British commerce, large quantities of goods such as coal, wool, grain, and metal were often sold by the hundredweight (cwt). However, in Britain, a hundredweight didn’t equal 100 pounds. Instead, 1 British hundredweight equals 112 pounds. A long ton was defined as 20 hundredweight.
That means:
112 pounds × 20 = 2,240 pounds
This became the standard British ton, now known as the long ton or imperial ton.
Why 112 pounds? Because it divides easily into many useful fractions. Merchants frequently needed to split shipments into halves, quarters, eighths, or other portions, and 112 could be divided neatly into numbers such as:
- 2
- 4
- 7
- 8
- 14
- 16
- 28
That flexibility made calculations easier before calculators.
The American Short Ton
When the United States standardized its weights during the 19th century, it simplified the system. Instead of using a 112-pound hundredweight, the American system adopted a straightforward figure: 1 hundredweight equals 100 pounds, with 20 hundredweight in a ton; the math becomes simple:
100 pounds × 20 = 2,000 pounds (Even the members of the Acorn can do this math very easily)
This became known as the short ton, which remains the standard ton used in the United States today. So, depending on where you are in the world, the word ton can refer to slightly different amounts.
When Tons Became Ship Weight
Although the word ton originated as a cargo measurement, the maritime world eventually began using it to describe a ship’s actual weight. Modern naval and shipping terminology includes several types of tonnage:
Displacement tonnage
This refers to the weight of the water displaced by a ship. Because a floating vessel displaces its own weight in water, this measurement effectively tells us how much the ship itself weighs.
Navies like the United States Navy and the Royal Navy traditionally expressed displacement in long tons.
Deadweight tonnage
This measures how much weight a ship can safely carry, including cargo, fuel, crew, food, and supplies.
Gross tonnage
This measurement refers to the ship’s internal volume rather than its weight.
Despite the similar terminology, these different tonnage measures capture very different aspects of a vessel.
A Word That Traveled the World
Few measurement terms have such a colorful origin story as the word ton. What began as a massive barrel of wine shipped across medieval trade routes eventually evolved into a universal term used in shipping, engineering, mining, manufacturing, and logistics.
The word’s evolution reflects the practical mindset of early merchants and sailors. They needed a simple way to count cargo and wine barrels. As commerce expanded, governments standardized measurements, and science refined definitions. Still, the word’s roots remained anchored in its humble beginnings.
From Medieval Wine to Modern Measurement
Today, the metric system dominates global trade, and most international industries use the metric ton. The legacy of the old system remains embedded in language, maritime terminology, and historical records. Next time you hear someone say something weighs “a ton,” remember that the phrase once referred to giant wine barrels stacked inside wooden ships sailing across the Atlantic.
There you have it. Who knew that the word ” ton ” had so many different meanings depending on where you’re in the world? This is going down a rabbit hole. When we looked up information on Big Ben, we found it was so far from the beginning. Not to mention the other things we found out during our trip with Alice venturing to Wonderland on the web. Other honorable mentions include 1 foot being the length of the pharaoh’s foot, and the weight of Stones.
With all of this dancing like sugar plumbs in our head, I just want to sit back and enjoy a nice cold beer. Make sure you get it in an Imperial pint glass, not the standard pint, if you want more.
Take care and type again soon.