If you're buying a car with no experience with power measurement or vehicle statistics, you may be confused by the vehicle's key capabilities. You can assume that a horse can produce around 1 horsepower. It makes perfect sense. It's way off the mark.
How much power can a horse produce? How did this term start?
According to the University of Calgary's Energy Education website, the maximum output of a horse is closer to 15hp. The unit might be called "humanpower", since the average healthy person can produce just over 1 horsepower.
What is the largest group of animals ever recorded?
Where did the term come from? James Watt, a Scottish engineer remembered for his steam engines, first used it in the 1700s. He invented a unit of measurement that would show the superiority of his steam engines over horses, in order to promote his contraptions.
Watt determined that a working horse could turn a mill wheel 144 times a day. He estimated that the horses could push about 14,774.41 kilograms 1 meter per minute. The "horsepower" unit was born after he rounded this up to 33,000 pounds foot-pounds of work per minute.
Watt didn't care about the accuracy of the measurement, only that it highlighted the drastic productivity improvements buyers would experience if they purchased one of his steam engines. His machines were more reliable and powerful than horses, and as a result, very few people questioned the validity of his calculations.
Watt was an engineering genius and was so revered by his peers that the "watt" unit of power was eventually named after him. Watt created a term for a horse that can exert more than 1 horsepower, but why do we still use it?
Eric Lacey, a senior lecturer in English language at the University of Winchester in the United Kingdom, said that there are more words that are estranged from their origins than people realize.
Who invented the light bulb?
James Watt was a pioneer in the field of engineering. The image was taken by the photographer, Keith Lance.
Lacey told Live Science that sometimes words don't look right because they're using older meanings. The word "highway" comes from an older meaning of "high" which meant a main road. The phrase "high seas" has the same sort of thing as "the main seas."
Many of our words are confused by this type of confusion.
Lacey said that a lot of things don't make sense because they were based on estimations that could be variable or misguided. The measurement of an 'acre' was roughly the unit of land which could be used by one person with a single yoke of oxen in one day. Depending on the type of plow, the shape of the land and how demanding the overlord was, this could be higher or lower.
What makes a term stand the test of time is not always known. Why do some words remain in the past while others become ubiquitous?
This is the most important part of linguistics. Lacey said that if they could accurately predict what words would be ingrained in people's minds, they would be earning a fortune. The way people interact and the words they use are two things that are important to bear in mind.
Lacey said that people may avoid words because they have problematic meanings or may choose words because they like their new meanings.
Lacey said that people may choose certain words because of the bigger picture of their interactions, such as responding to cultural events or emulating someone they aspire to be like. People may use words to signal their identities and values, to show they are up-to-date or to mock something.
Lacey said that the word "horsepower" survived against this backdrop. It's doubtful the term would have been as popular if horses hadn't been the most obvious source of industrial energy in the early 19th century.
Lacey said he would be happy with the idea of changing "horsepower" to "humanpower". He said that it would be a neat example of a word telling people what it did and would be more meaningful as a unit of measurement.
Live Science published the original article.
