I feel betrayed...

Horses today yes. They are built incredibly efficient compared to yesterday's horses. Better ligament material, lighter and stronger bones, not to mention the carbon muscle fibers.

This but unironically, horses are constantly being bred to be bigger. The reason people rode chariots in Greece is because horses were too small to ride horseback.
- Wait, really?
Of you feed a house kerosene it will run much faster but it will emit white smoke.
Don’t forget about the gear all horses are on nowadays! You need to check the labels for All Natural hp.
- Say, I'm not really a horse guy, but my dad says my mustang needs more blinker fluid. Well the guy at the stable sold me some, but now where do I put it?
So what do you want?
Faster horses?
Horses today yes. They are built incredibly efficient compared to yesterday’s horses. Better ligament material, lighter and stronger bones, not to mention the carbon muscle fibers.
and i thought horses used to be toeing the line between fucking exploding and run fast hee hee hoo hoo

I was curious, so read up on wikipedia.

somebody measured horses in 2023, and foumd that horses produce 5,7hp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower

edit: wikipedia links to youtube

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/how-much-horsepower-does-a-horse-have this one also says 15, teorietically 24 🤯

Citing measurements made at the 1926 Iowa State Fair, they reported that the peak power over a few seconds has been measured to be as high as 14.88 hp (11.10 kW) and also observed that for sustained activity, a work rate of about 1 hp (0.75 kW) per horse is consistent with agricultural advice from both the 19th and 20th centuries [...]
Sounds to me like the 1 hp unit is fair, after all.
- So it's like RMS and PMP for speakers. 600 W¹
  ¹ Briefly, before it blows up
Here is the salient point on the Wikipedia page that explains why horses don’t produce 1 HP:
Watt judged that the horse could pull with a force of 180 pounds-force (800 N)
Basically, Watts made up HP to sell his steam engine to mines and likely made up a number to make the new technology seem better.
Some things never change.
- Gotta love autocorrection of Watt into Watts. Watt = J/s = N*m/s = kg*m*m/(s^2*s) = kg*m^2/(s^3)

Sure that sounds like a lot, until you realize even a small firearm can deal 9 damage per second, suddenly 15 hp isn't all that much

I'm still not over learning that ponies aren't just young horses.
That's only hitscan. Projectiles like rockets can deal 90 HP damage.

thats not a sustainable amount of horsepower for a horse, but it is for an engine. Notably engines are better at moving heavy loads for longer and uphill. The name is misleading though. It should be like "sustained horsepower"

Wikipedia: "Two common definitions used today are the imperial horsepower, which is about 745.7 watts, and the metric horsepower, which is approximately 735.5 watts."
Oh fuck!
The name is misleading though, it should be like "non-systemic unit of power" or "non-SI unit of power".
- While it does sound cool to say my car has 490 NSU, I think horsepower is still cooler. Horses are cool.

Isn't it more work done over a day? One horse is able to maintain the work done by a one horsepower machine because the machine can work all day without tiring?

Yes, but why not make it one horse=1hp? That sounds like early marketing.
Edit: Let me be clear, why not make the current 15hp = 1 horse and make the measurement be 1hp = 1 horse. It has nothing to do with engineering or marketing logic, just a 1:1 measurement.
- Because when looking to replace work horses with a steam engine you didn't care what the absolute peak output of a horse was. You needed to know how big of an engine you needed based on how large the team of horses already powering the application was. Anyone trying to run a horse anywhere near their peak output for any length of time would injure them.
- Because if they only had 1hp they'd be the easiest thing to kill.
- For comparing machines to horses, use the power a horse can sustain all day long. Early industrial use of horses did not run them ragged and swap every 5 minutes.
- prisons used to have treadmills to power machines. six hours a day, with rest breaks.
  when there's an engine to replace that, of course they'd explain it in terms of how many men it could replace permanently.
  saying "but look at how much power Usain Bolt can produce for a few seconds" is not relevant.
  the hp unit is reasonable based on whole-day power from typical farm horses.

I was told 1 hp was the output of 1 donkey, so horse power is actually donkey power.

So dp
- Mmm, love me some DP, especially from my blower.
  It's gas powered.

Inflation hits all of us

Especially those who own horses (because they have money)

Well this is deeply misleading isn’t it

1 HP is the average work over a day.

I wouldn't be surprised to discover horses are better cared for now than when the coin was termed. We just understand nutrition better these days for both humans and animals. And we don't beat our animals like they did back then either.

Some people definitely still beat the shit out of their horses and livestock. Just go to a rodeo in the US sometime and you will see it.
OTOH, a horse was incredibly valuable to a common man.
There's evidence that knights would dismount before battle to prevent their horse from being injured, even though they knew they were exposing themselves to greater risk. Although we have more technical knowledge about how to "optimally" care for horses now, there's no reason to believe that we aren't as or more exploitative of them, rendering them as or less healthy than horses back then.