The hundred (Latin: centena) was an English unit of measurement used in the production, sale and taxation of various items in the medieval kingdom of England.
[3] The existence of a non-decimal base in the earliest traces of the Germanic languages is attested by the presence of glosses such as "tenty-wise" or "ten-count" to denote that certain numbers are to be understood as decimal.
The use of the long hundred in medieval England and Scotland is documented by Stevenson[6] and Goodare although the latter notes that it was sometimes avoided by using numbers such as "seven score".
[7] The Assize of Weights and Measures, one of England's statutes of uncertain date from c. 1300, shows both the short and long hundred in competing use.
Measuring by long hundreds declined as Arabic numerals, which require the uniform base 10, spread throughout Europe during and after the 14th century.