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Show Horse-Power. Watt, the great improver of the steam engine, introduced into the vocabulary vo-cabulary of machinists the term horsepower. horse-power. When he first beg.j the manufacture man-ufacture of steam engines, he experienced experi-enced much dii.iculty in ascertaining from his distant customers what sized engine they required, and they were not less puzzled how to communicate lo him the information. He was frequently fre-quently guided, however, by their mentioning the number of horses which the engine ordered was designed design-ed to replace. Ading upon this hint, he ascertained by experiment t'; .t the very strongest of the London brewers' horses (animals of wonderful size and strength), could exert a force equivalent equiva-lent to raising 23,000 pounds one foot a minute. This force he called one horse power, and adopted it as the standard in regulating the size of steam engines. Now. not one horse in a hundred is able to exert that degree de-gree of strength. A steam engine of ten horse-power can, in reality, do the work of about tv, nty horses. |