Ton

tun, an old English measure of capacity. The tun or ton was originally a large wine cask. According to English law and custom, each bulky commodity was measured by the space it occupied. Thus a ton of oak or ash timber was forty cubic feet; of flour, ten barrels; of potatoes, ten to thirty-six sacks; earth, twenty-three cubic feet; stone, sixteen cubic feet; salt, forty-two bushels; lime, forty bushels; while the long ton used in measuring coal and other coarse articles consists of twenty hundred-weight of 112 pounds each, or 2,240 pounds in all. The short ton in ordinary use equals 2,000 pounds. In other words, the ton, in its original meaning, is a measure of capacity. The word, like bushel, has been transferred to a given weight. See Tonnage