The term horsepower was invented by the engineer James Watt in 1782. Watt (1736 to 1819) is most famous for his work on improving the performance of steam engines. Watt was working with ponies lifting coal at a coal mine, and he
wanted to define the power available from one of these animals. He
found that, on average, a mine pony could do 22,000 foot-pounds (lift a
bucket of coal weighing 22,000 lb. a distance of 1-foot) of work in a
minute. He t...
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The term horsepower was invented by the engineer James Watt in 1782. Watt (1736 to 1819) is most famous for his work on improving the performance of steam engines.
Watt was working with ponies lifting coal at a coal mine, and he
wanted to define the power available from one of these animals. He
found that, on average, a mine pony could do 22,000 foot-pounds (lift a
bucket of coal weighing 22,000 lb. a distance of 1-foot) of work in a
minute. He then increased that number by 50 percent and fixed the
measurement of horsepower at 33,000-foot-pounds of work in one minute.
Under this system, one horsepower is defined as:
- 1 hp = 33,000 ft·pound-force·min−1 = exactly 745.69987158227022 W
(From Wikipedia,“
Horsepower.”)
