what is the meaning of the word horsepower?

Answer 1

Horsepower is defined as work done over time. The exact definition of one horsepower is 33,000 lb.ft./minute. Put another way, if you were to lift 33,000 pounds one foot over a period of one minute, you would have been working at the rate of one horsepower. In this case, you'd have expended one horsepower-minute of energy. Even more interesting is how the definition came to be. It was originated by James Watt, (1736-1819) the inventor of the steam engine and the man whose name has been immortalized by the definition of Watt as a unit of power. To help sell his steam engines, Watt needed a way of rating their capabilities. The engines were replacing horses, the usual source of industrial power of the day. The typical horse, attached to a mill that ground corn or cut wood, walked a 24 foot diameter (about 75.4 feet circumference) circle. Watt calculated that the horse pulled with a force of 180 pounds, although how he came up with the figure is not known. Watt observed that a horse typically made 144 trips around the circle in an hour, or about 2.4 per minute. This meant that the horse traveled at a speed of 180.96 feet per minute. Watt rounded off the speed to 181 feet per minute and multiplied that by the 180 pounds of force the horse pulled (181 x 180) and came up with 32,580 ft.-lbs./minute. That was rounded off to 33,000 ft.-lbs./minute, the figure we use today.

Answer 2

Mechanical Horsepower (hp)

The most common definition of horsepower for engines is the one originally proposed by James Watt in 1782. Under this system, one horsepower is defined as:

1 hp = 33,000 ft·pound-force·min−1 = exactly 0.74569987158227022 kW

A common memory aid is based on the fact that Christopher Columbus first sailed to the Americas in 1492. The memory aid states that 1 hp = ½ Columbus or 746 W.

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
Divide that son-of-a-gun by two
And that's the number of watts in a horsepower too.


Brake horsepower (bhp)

Brake horsepower (bhp) is the measure of an engine's horsepower without the loss in power caused by the gearbox, generator, differential, water pump and other auxiliaries. Thus the prefix "brake" refers to where the power is measured: at the engine's output shaft, as on an engine dynamometer. The actual horsepower delivered to the driving wheels is less. An engine would have to be retested to obtain a rating in another system. The term "brake" refers to the use of a band brake to measure torque during the test (which is multiplied by the engine speed in revs/sec and the circumference of the band to give the power).

Answer 3

Horsepower is a measurement of the amount of power generated by an engine at a given RPM. Not sure about the actual origin of the word, but I'm guessing it had to do with early automobiles being called "horseless carriages" and people wanting to know how an automobile rated against a horse. More horsepower means a higher top-end speed when all other factors are equal, as opposed to torque (rotational force) where more torque means faster acceleration when all other factors are equal.

Answer 4

Its a measure of the thermodynamic efficiency of an engine. What you really need to know is the torque or turning power of an engine - a much more realistic measure in real life. All these motorbikes with a high horse power often have a relatively small torque output. Hence they are useless in heavier cars but go like snot due in motorbikes to a low power to weight ratio.

Answer 5

It is exactly what it says. 200 horsepower is the equivalent to the power 200 actual horses would generate.

Answer 6

It's based on the old way of measuring the power of an engine by comparing it to the number of horses that would do the same job.

Answer 7

its an old saying it came from back in the day of the horse and buggy when people would use horses to do work they would say it took 2 to 10 horses to do the job now it refers to how much power an engine puts out not the equivalent to horses though

Answer 8

back when transport was via horse drawn carriages, bhp was how many horses you had towing the carriage. nowadays the same principles apply, so a 100bhp car would be equivalent to 100 horses, where a 150 bhp car is significantly more powerful.

Answer 9

It means the power of a horse.

Answer 10

old kinda measurement, how many horses it takes to pull something, now just used in engines ( how much power is needed to make it go )