Horsepower

The reason why the horsepower got defined as about three-quarters of a kilowatt is because it's based on how much work you can get a horse to do in a day. The definition of horsepower dates back to the the time when pumping of water out of mine shafts could be done by having a horse on a treadmill or by the more modern method of using an engine. Industrialists considering whether they should upgrade to steam power could be tempted by how many horses could be replaced by a steam engine and therefore how big a cost saving this represented. So, where a place previously required a team of eight horses to be kept, looked after, and be put to work in turns on different shifts, the size of steam engine required to pension them off would be eight horsepower.