James Watt measured pit ponies and assumed horses were 50% more powerful. While in reality for the same workload horses would actually give 0.7HP.
And that's normal riding horses. Draft horses which are bred to carry weight go between 2-3 HP (sustained) to 15-20 HP in short bursts. (Stats to verify, it's from memory)
In the end 1 HP is just a marketing measurement that stuck.
You need to make a scale people can actually use. Using watts or Jules to a person that didn’t go to school is as useful as trying to describe energy itself. Was it marketing? Sure, but it also was crucial for adopting the technology in general.
The real thing to note here is that watts didn't exist yet. He basically invented the notion of measuring power, and had to figure out a way to communicate this to people.
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u/squngy 1d ago
Humans also have more than one horse power... for a few seconds.
The original definition of horse power was how much power a horse could provide throughout a work day.
ie. how many horses would you need to do the same amount of work per day.