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"In the scale industry which dates back to the beginnings of measurement; Dead Naught or the point at which there is no movement of scale is Dead Zero. Naught is the arithmetical symbol 0(Webster). Zero was replaced with Naught having the same identifier as a position of "Zero". One can look at the orientation in Nautical and Firearm (Military) Terms (As described in earlier accounts, and restated here): The point of departure in reckoning; specifically : the point from which the graduation of a scale (as of a thermometer) begins (2) : the temperature represented by the zero mark on a thermometer b : the setting or adjustment of the sights of a firearm that causes it to shoot to point of aim at a desired range. The Dead Nuts is simply the wrong spelling for Dead Naught but is well accepted and will remain a constant for many years to come. Remember before we had digital scales there were threaded nuts that were locked in place to set the zero. A scale adjusted to and set to zero has "Dead Nuts."
The site also mentions that some people say "dead balls accurate," so we went from "naught" to "nuts" to "balls," hilarious!