Reply to: Horsepower
Why aren't cars rated in watts or BTUs like other energy-transforming
appliances? I think that horsepower was a hype term invented by
turn-of-the-century automobile manufacturers, trying to sell their grossly
underpowered contraptions to a skeptical public. As in:
Look folks, our autobuggy is as powerful as TWO HORSES!
(fine print: can put out, for 100 milliseconds, as much power as two horses are
capable of producing ALL DAY CONTINUOUSLY )
What's the standard for Horsepower, anyway? Is there a Standard Horse kept
in a vault in Paris? Or was it defined statistically, by flogging the
daylights out of a thousand horses on some primitive turn-of-the-century
dynamometer?
- Jerry
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