Ratio of the average mass of a chemical element 's atoms to 1 12 the mass of an atom of the carbon-12 isotope .
The original standard of atomic weight, established in the 19th century, was hydrogen, with a value of 1. From 0441; 1900 until 1961, the reference standard was oxygen, with a value of 16, and the unit of atomic mass was defined as 1 16 the mass of an oxygen atom. Oxygen, however, contains small amounts of two isotopes that are heavier than the most abundant one, and 16 is actually a weighted average of the masses of the three isotopes of oxygen. Therefore, the standard was changed to one based on carbon-12. The new scale required only minimal changes to the values that had been used for chemical atomic weights.