Standards of Weight Act, 1939

The Standards of Weight Act, 1939 established the official, legally binding system of weight measurement historically used in Pakistan, based on the traditional "standard grain" as the base unit. Section 2 defines the standard grain by reference to a specific iridio-platinum cylinder kept at the Mint in Lahore, certified by the British Board of Trade's Standards Department as weighing 1799.84585 grains in vacuo — every other standard weight is derived from this single physical reference object.

Section 3 sets out the resulting standard weights in traditional South Asian and imperial units: the tola (180 grains), seer (80 tolas, or 14,400 grains), maund (40 seers), pound (7,000 grains), ounce (one-sixteenth of a pound), hundredweight (112 pounds), and ton (2,240 pounds). No weight outside this list, or its exact multiples and sub-multiples, may legally be used as a standard weight.

Section 4 requires the Federal Government to prepare an authenticated master set of these standard weights, supply matching authenticated sets to each Provincial Government, and make similar sets available to acceding or non-acceding states on request and payment. Section 5 lets the Federal Government make rules for preparing, safeguarding, and periodically verifying and adjusting these weight sets.

This is a historical measurement-standards law predating Pakistan's later shift to the metric system under the Weights and Measures (International System) Act, 1967. It is over 85 years old, and readers should check current practice — metric units have long since superseded the tola/seer/maund system for most official and commercial purposes.