Apothecaries' system the Roman weight system. An apothecaries' pound normally consisted of 12 ounces. (In France this was changed to 16 ounces, and in Spain the customary unit was the "marco", a mark of 8 ounces.) In the south of Europe and in France, the scruple was generally divided into 24 grains, so that one ounce consisted of 576 grains. Nevertheless, the subdivision of an ounce was somewhat more uniform than that of a pound, and a common feature of all variants is that 12 ounces are roughly 100 drachms (96–128 drachms) and a grain is roughly the weight of a physical
Anglo-Saxon pound Thomas Snelling writes that the division of the pound into 12 ounces was in use with the Romans, and the division of ounces into 20 pennyweights was introduced into France by Charlemagne, and then brought to England by William the Conqueror. The Latin word for "pound" is libra. The £ or ₤ is a stylised writing of the letter L, a short way of writing libra. This is similar to how a pound of mass is abbreviated "lb". Up until 1972, especially on typewriters or keyboards without a "£" symbol, it was common to write "L" or "l" instead of