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The pint is a unit of volume. It is in use mainly in the USA and the UK, although the value is not the same and the US has
two types of pint:
- 1 pint (US, wet) = 16 US fluid ounces = 0.473176 litres.
- 1 pint (US, dry) = 0.550610 litres.
- 1 Imperial pint (UK) = 20 UK fluid ounces = 0.568262 litres.
The metric equivalents above are rounded to six decimal places.
As part of the metrication process, the pint in the UK is now mostly used
as a measure for beer when sold by the glass (in pubs
for instance) and, to a decreasing extent, milk. Many recipes published in the UK still
provide ingredient quantities in imperial and metric, where the pint is often used as a unit for larger liquid quantites.
History
The Imperial pint is defined in terms of the gallon, which was originally defined as
the volume of eight pounds of wheat. Other
versions of the gallon were defined for different commodities, and there were equally many versions of the pint.
America adopted the British wine gallon (defined in 1707 as 231 cubic inches) as its basic liquid measure, from which the US wet pint is derived, and the British corn
gallon (1/8 of a standard 'Winchester' bushel of corn, or 268.8 cubic inches) as its dry measure, from which the US dry pint is derived.
In 1824 the British parliament replaced all its variant gallons with a new 'imperial'
gallon of 277.42 cubic inches, from which the UK pint is derived.
The UK pint is officially defined as 0.56826125 litre precisely in The Units of Measurement Regulations 1995
http://www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1995/Uksi_19951804_en_2.htm
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