Watts to Poncelets (W to poncelet)

1 watt equals 0.001019716213 poncelets (rounded).

How to convert watts to poncelets

To convert watts to poncelets, multiply the number of watts by 0.001019716213. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply poncelets by 980.665.

poncelets = watts × 0.001019716213

Example: 10 watts = 0.01019716213 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

Watt (W)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI unit of power: one joule per second. A typical LED bulb uses 5–10 W and a laptop 30–60 W.

Credit for the name goes to C. William Siemens, who proposed it in August 1882 in his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He chose it to honor James Watt, the Scottish inventor who in 1776 improved the Newcomen steam engine. An International Conference on Electric Units and Standards adopted Siemens' definition in London in October 1908 as the international watt. After the 1948 General Conference on Weights and Measures the unit was redefined in absolute terms, and in 1960 the 11th General Conference adopted it into the SI as the unit of power.

Today one watt is one joule per second, or equivalently one volt times one ampere. Orders-of-magnitude tables put an LED light bulb at about 7 W and an adult's basal metabolic rate at roughly 100 W. A 100 kg person climbing a 3 m ladder in 5 seconds works at about 600 W, while a laborer can sustain around 75 W over an eight-hour day. The watt measures a rate, so it says how fast energy is being used, not how much has been used in total.

The watt is the reference unit for power on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Watt; Wikipedia: Orders of magnitude (power)

Poncelet (poncelet)

French (Ancien Régime)Historical unit (no longer in standard use)

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

See all power units.