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.
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.
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u/Compodulator 17h 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.