Horsepower to Poncelets (hp to poncelet)
1 horsepower equals 0.7604022491 poncelets (rounded).
How to convert horsepower to poncelets
To convert horsepower to poncelets, multiply the number of horsepower by 0.7604022491. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply poncelets by 1.315093427 (rounded).
poncelets = horsepower × 0.7604022491
Example: 10 horsepower = 7.604022491 poncelets.
Several different horsepower units exist. This site lists mechanical (745.7 W), metric (735.5 W) and electrical (746 W) horsepower separately.
About these units
Horsepower (hp)
The mechanical horsepower: 550 foot-pounds per second, about 745.7 watts. James Watt coined it to compare steam engines with draft horses.
Horsepower was a sales pitch before it was a unit. Late in the 18th century the Scottish engineer James Watt adopted the term to compare the output of steam engines with the draft horses they replaced. His 1782 experiments found that a brewery horse could produce 32,400 foot-pounds-force per minute, and in 1783 he and Matthew Boulton standardized the figure at 33,000 foot-pounds-force per minute. Customers could then be told how many horses an engine would replace.
That figure works out to 550 foot-pounds-force per second, or about 745.7 watts: the power needed to lift 550 pounds by one foot in one second. Several cousins exist, including metric horsepower and electrical horsepower, defined as exactly 746 W. Car ratings added more confusion. Early British taxable horsepower was a formula based on bore and cylinder count, not measured output, and American ratings before 1972 used SAE gross brake horsepower, measured without accessories. In the European Union, horsepower may be used only as a supplementary unit under Directive 80/181/EEC, in force from 1 January 2010.
1 horsepower = 745.6998716 watts (approximately).
Sources: Wikipedia: Horsepower; Wikipedia: Metric horsepower
Poncelet (poncelet)
Exactly 980.665 watts: 100 kilogram-force meters per second. A 19th-century French unit named after the engineer Jean-Victor Poncelet.
Engineers in 19th-century France measured machine output in kilogram-force metres per second, and the poncelet gave a round figure to that practice: the power needed to raise a 100 kilogram mass at one metre per second. The name honours Jean-Victor Poncelet, a military engineer and mathematician who taught mechanics at Metz from 1825 and later held a chair at the Sorbonne. He is known for improving the undershot water wheel with curved blades, described in a memoir of 1827.
The unit was meant for large installations such as water wheels and turbines, where horsepower-sized numbers were awkward. At 100 kgf·m/s it equals 980.665 watts using standard gravity, which is about 1.315 imperial horsepower. It is exactly four thirds of the metric horsepower (cheval-vapeur, 75 kgf·m/s), and that smaller unit replaced it in everyday use. Wikipedia cites Cardarelli's encyclopaedia of units for the naming and gives little more history.
Today the poncelet is only a historical curiosity. In the SI it is simply a little under one kilowatt.
1 poncelet = 980.665 watts (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Poncelet (unit); Wikipedia: Horsepower (metric horsepower); Wikipedia: Jean-Victor Poncelet
Related conversions
- Poncelets to horsepower (reverse)
- Horsepower to watts
- Horsepower to kilowatts
- Horsepower to megawatts
- Horsepower to gigawatts
- Horsepower to metric horsepower
- Horsepower to BTU per hour
- Horsepower to milliwatts
- Horsepower to electrical horsepower
- Horsepower to foot-pounds per second
- Horsepower to tons of refrigeration
- Horsepower to kilocalories per hour
- Horsepower to calories per second
- Watts to poncelets
- Kilowatts to poncelets
See all power units.