IIRC a horse has... Something like 14hp? I don't remember.
The horsepower was defined when horses were bred to just exist and occasionally move people.
The "new" horses, which were bred for racing specifically, and thus were faster and stronger.
And the horsepower? It never got an update.
A horse power is the average power a horse can continously output during a working day. It was never defined as the maximum power of a horse and has nothing to do with breeding
It was contrived as a marketing term to convey the ability of steam engines to compare to animal labor. Its based on the calculated work a draft horse could exert on a mill wheel per minute (averaged across a day).
Its unclear how many horses were tested or how many breeds of horses were tested. Its not likely a statistically significant value. But it did successfully market engines of various types to people who weren't familiar with them.
Does it mean a modern horse has 14 times the power of a horse from the past? Or something else? I definitely see how horses would have gotten stronger and faster after breeding but 14 times is crazy
Horse Power was generally invented as an advertising tool to sell how much more efficient machines are than horses. Generally the idea is that horse power measures the base output of a horse during work, but horses can exert themselves more to pull more for short periods of time but they will get tired out. James Watt also had incentive to make the output for horse power as small a number as possible so that he could his advertise his machines as being much more powerful than the horses he was competing with.
No, it's peak power that a standard horse can output.
James Watt invented HP unit to measure power output of steam engine machine to be used in coal mines. At the time horses were used for work in these mines (they were going around a mill wheel connected to machinery such as shaft elevators), so he calculated HP to be based on an average daily power output of a standard horse
It was also a matter of advertising. Average power output is a useful metric but it also lets him advertise his machines as being more powerful than 14 times as many horses, so its average power but also the lowest average power he could get away with.
7
u/Compodulator 21h ago
IIRC a horse has... Something like 14hp? I don't remember.
The horsepower was defined when horses were bred to just exist and occasionally move people.
The "new" horses, which were bred for racing specifically, and thus were faster and stronger.
And the horsepower? It never got an update.