I’m confused about the meaning of this word. Is it how much a horse can pull translated into how much the engine can pull? Also, what is the actual “metric”? Why do we still use this? It seems archaic.
Also, what type of horse was originally used to get the measurement?
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The term horsepower was first coined during the industrial revolution as mechanical (steam) engines started taking over as the main method of providing the power necessary to run factories in place of the more traditional horse.
It was used as a way to compare the strength of a new engine against a known standard – the horses already in use, with the idea being that a one horsepower engine would be able to do about the same amount of work as a horse would do.
By ‘work’, the standard definition is the ability to lift a weight – the ability of a horse to lift a weight attached to the other end of a rope via a pulley. More horsepower meaning you can lift a heavier weight, or lift it quicker.
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