bushel
volume British/American Measure for grains, etc.
BI 8 BI gal (36.368 72~ L). The Act of 1824 that introduced BI specified striken measurement for liquids and ‘for dry Goods not measured by heaped Measure’, going on to cite coal, lime, fish, potatoes, and fruits as specific exceptions. For these, the bushel measure had to have a flat base and a round top of external diameter 19½ in; heaping must be in the form of a cone, of at least 6 in height. The bushel was removed from official UK measures in 1970.The UK Weights and Measures Act 1985 explicitly excluded from use for trade the bushell, cental, chain, drachm, dram, fluid drachm, furlong, grain, hundredweight, ounce apoth., peck, pennyweight, quarter, quintal, rood, scruple, stone, ton, the square mile, cubic inch, cubic foot, cubic yard, and the term ‘metric ton’. However, the legal status of the bushell, fluid drachm, and peck had been repealed, along with all apothecaries' units and troy units other than ounce, by Order in 1970. Besides the remaining BI units and the simple SI units, the Act included the kilometre, decimetre, centimetre and millimetre, the square metre, square decimetre, square centimetre and square millimetre, the hectare and decare along with the are, the cubic metre, cubic decimetre and cubic centimetre, the hectolitre decilitre, centilitre and millilitre, the tonne (or ‘metric tonne’), kilogram, hectogram, milligram and carat (metric). All had been included in the similar Act of 1963, but with some variation of name: -gram was -gramme, decare was dekare, the tonne appeared only as metric ton.
US-C dry The volume of a cylindrical vessel of 18½ in diameter and 8 in deep (identically that for the British Winchester bushel of 1697), i.e. 2 150.420~ in3 (35.239 07~ L) if strictly striken.
See Table 8.
| US-C for dry goods | SI | BI | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| dry pint | … | … | … | … | 551.~ mL | 0.969~ pt |
| 2 | dry quart | … | … | … | 1.10~ L | 1.94~ pt |
| 16 | 8 | peck | … | … | 8.81~ L | 1.94~ gal |
| 64 | 32 | 4 | bushel | … | 35.2~ L | 3.88~ pk |
| 8 | quarter | 282.~ L | 7.75~ bu |
mass A unit imputed from the preceding volume unit, especially for the measurement of grains, etc., the mass depending on the species and even variety of grain. These values are often set by statute, and reset from time to time. Current values in the USA are:
60 lb (27.216~ kg) for wheat and soybeans,
56 lb (25.401~ kg) for flour, rye, flaxseed, grain sorghum, and maize - the US or International corn bushel, but
70 lb (31.751~ kg) for husked maize,
48 lb (21.772~ kg) for barley,
45 lb (20.412~ kg) for rough rice,
38 lb (17.237~ kg) for oats.The USA also has the bushel of cement of 80 else 100 lb.
The BI bushel was identically 80 lb for distilled water (see gallon).
