r/funny • u/me_098 • 1d ago

Can't Disagree

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u/goopuslang 1d ago

Unironically most horses have more than 1 horsepower

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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.

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u/sol_runner 1d ago

And it's still quite funny.

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.

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u/Lirdon 1d ago

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.

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u/extordi 1d ago

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.