This section is from the book "Facts Worth Knowing", by Robert Kemp Philip. Also available from Amazon: Inquire Within for Anything You Want to Know.
Let the weight which will produce equilibrium after transposition be found, and with the former weight be reduced to the same denomination of weight: and let the two weights thus expressed be multiplied together, and the square root of the product will be the true weight.
Example. - If one weight be 7 lbs., and the other 9 1.7, 7 + 9 1.7 = 64 and the square root of 64 is 8; hence 8 lbs. is the true weight.
 
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