We’ve all heard the term horsepower before, but it has surprisingly little to do with horses. The term came about thanks to a genius marketing tactic at the time, but continues to be used to this day as one of the most important units of measurement in the rates of a variety of machines. This includes but is not limited to, vehicles, arguably the most popular machine to have this description. However, horsepower can be used to describe the power of anything with an engine.
Where Did the Term Horsepower Come From?
The term horsepower came from an inventor in Scotland named James Watt back in the 1770’s. With the invention of the steam engine came an incredible opportunity to revolutionize societies all over the world in production. However, he needed a better way to market it than simply stating it would improve the performance of the current machinery.
James took account of the fact that the economy was still primarily, in many ways, reliant on horses for a variety of tasks to keep things running. He decided to showcase how much more efficient and better the steam engine was in comparison to a horse’s abilities, primarily in power.
He attached a horse to a sort of pulley system with a rope, and measured how much weight the horse could lift one foot off the ground in one second. Since horses vary so much in strength, it was kind of hard to give a proper number. So today, we say that one horsepower is equal to a horse lifting 550 pounds one foot off the ground in one second.
What Does Horsepower Really Mean?
Therefore, all horsepower really means is measuring the rate at which work is done. Horsepower is typically used to describe the power in a car’s engine, but even something as small as a garage door opener has about one horsepower, or 1 hp for short.
With that being said, having a higher horsepower does not necessarily mean it will be the best performing vehicle. Horsepower goes hand in hand with another measurement, the torque. In simple terms, horsepower is the rate at which work is done, but torque measures the amount of force required to do the work. Torque aids more in getting a car up to speed, while horsepower is what allows it to maintain that speed for longer periods of time.
This can mean that if your car’s engine has a lower torque but a higher horsepower, it will be more likely to win a race based off of length that requires a maintenance of a higher speed than it would be to win a race based off of a short distance and solely based off of speed. A car with a higher torque will usually beat out a car with a higher horsepower in short distance speed races.
Does the Ford Mustang Have Especially Good Horsepower?
The Ford Mustang is one of the most famous and recognizable vehicles, and notably has a logo of a horse. Does this mean it has a particularly exceptional horsepower measurement? While the horsepower of the vehicles combined with an equally enviable torque are incredible, there is a lot of debate on where the name of the car and the subsequent logo came from.
Many sources have come out and said that the term Mustang was taken from a famous fighter jet back in the day, also called a Mustang. The logo was something designers came up with at the beginning of the design process, likely a nod to the wild and free nature of real life horse Mustangs.
The term Mustang is used to describe a feral horse, famously found in the wild west of the United States. They likely wanted to depict a freeing, powerful vehicle with this logo. Plenty of other sources contrasting the fighter jet theory is that the vehicle Mustang was in fact named after the wild horses roaming America. Despite even a former Ford president coming out and stating this fact, it’s still up for debate today on where the name came from. All this to say, the Ford Mustang has incredible capabilities, but the name did not derive from its horsepower, we know that much.
How Much Horsepower Do Horses Have?
So, how much horsepower does a horse actually have? This is certainly up for debate and highly dependent on the size and strength of the horse. With that said, the average horse likely has between 5-10 horsepower, with the strongest horses having up to 15 horsepower, but that’s not necessarily sustainable. Unlike a car, a horse wears out much quicker and requires frequent breaks, so over the course of an entire day’s work, a horse is likely to produce an average of one horsepower, give or take.
While horses are incredibly powerful animals, they cannot match the power of a machine that requires few breaks over long periods of time. Despite the name, horses didn’t really have much to do with the term horsepower other than a marketing tactic and some clever mathematical experiments.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/how-much-horsepower-does-one-horse-have
