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Here's an interesting bit on the origins of horsepower, it was on a documentary I saw a while back:
Back in the Donkey driven coal mining days where donkeys and horses were used (well not horses so much, so it should be Donkey power) to bring up the carts and buckets of coal from the mine, it was determined that one horse could lift roughly 550 lbs straight vertical out of a mine shaft at a rate of 1 foot per second. Later on when machines where replacing horses they needed a measurement for the machines to give buyers some idea how much power the machine had to lift coal. Of course the logical solution was to sell them with power ratings based on the number of horses (donkeys) each machine lift or cart could replace. Some of the story has been fudged over the years and there are no exact times or dates for when the term was first coined, but it has since been adopted as the standard unit of automobile power measurement for over 100 years in several of the worlds largest countries.
Some interesting stuff:
1 horsepower can lift 550 lbs at 1g (vertical) at a rate of 1 fps:
1hp = 550lbs x 1g x 1 fps / 550
1 horsepower can move 550 lbs up a 10% grade at 10 fps:
1hp = 550lbs x .1g x 10fps /550
Also:
1hp = 760 Watts
This means one Hirsch upgraded 900 can light up at LEAST one thousand five hundred twenty 100 watt lightbulbs @ 200 wheel hp. Maybe I should hook the Viggen up to the Christmas lights, no? LOL
Back in the Donkey driven coal mining days where donkeys and horses were used (well not horses so much, so it should be Donkey power) to bring up the carts and buckets of coal from the mine, it was determined that one horse could lift roughly 550 lbs straight vertical out of a mine shaft at a rate of 1 foot per second. Later on when machines where replacing horses they needed a measurement for the machines to give buyers some idea how much power the machine had to lift coal. Of course the logical solution was to sell them with power ratings based on the number of horses (donkeys) each machine lift or cart could replace. Some of the story has been fudged over the years and there are no exact times or dates for when the term was first coined, but it has since been adopted as the standard unit of automobile power measurement for over 100 years in several of the worlds largest countries.
Some interesting stuff:
1 horsepower can lift 550 lbs at 1g (vertical) at a rate of 1 fps:
1hp = 550lbs x 1g x 1 fps / 550
1 horsepower can move 550 lbs up a 10% grade at 10 fps:
1hp = 550lbs x .1g x 10fps /550
Also:
1hp = 760 Watts
This means one Hirsch upgraded 900 can light up at LEAST one thousand five hundred twenty 100 watt lightbulbs @ 200 wheel hp. Maybe I should hook the Viggen up to the Christmas lights, no? LOL