Film Speed examples

I've found the discussions of film development in this forum to be very interesting and useful. However, because I don't know the jargon I am a little confused about 1 or 2 points. First when someone talks about speed when comparing development times and developers what are they really talking about physically. I thought film speed defines the way the silver grains react with photons and was a result of it's manufacture and developing would mainly affect contrast. Also it seems that many people state what the 'real' speed of a film is although there seems to be alot of discrepency between them. Unless someone is sure that their meter, shutter, ASA and aperatures are perfectly calibrated against set standards isn't it irrelevant? And finally does anyone know of a site or book that actually gives examples of the above concepts and development procedures?

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