PrintStand beside the finish line of any racetrack in the world and dare yourself to remain unflapped. I’ve tried; it’s futile. The pack rounds the turn, and involuntarily your pulse quickens, eyes darting from hooves to outstretched necks to flying manes and tails as the hijinks of the bettors beside you intensify, the final moments igniting in a blaze of speed so fast it almost takes your breath away. You ask yourself: horsepower? Have I just felt the physical effects?
U.S. Equestrian Federation Technical Advisor and Between Rounds columnist Anne Gribbons recently compared her passion for dressage to her husband’s classic car fascination, and it got me wondering about the definition of a term I’ve always found mystifying.
Horsepower.
Riders know a racetrack isn’t necessary for the experience. Swing into any saddle, anywhere, and there you are: A captain at the helm—and mercy—of galloping, volatile, impregnable horsepower.
And yet horses under car hoods have always seemed an abstract, incongruous concept. Just how does a stampede translate to cylindrical explosions, firing pistons? Where do you draw the line from harnessed power to mechanical speed?
London Breweries
Anyone who’s visited London’s Hyde Park knows that horses are an essential part of the city’s history. Fabled Rotten Row, established as a carriageway along the park’s south side in the 17th century, is maintained today as a bridleway and used daily by the Household Cavalry and Hyde Park Stables to exercise horses.
But anyone who’s seen the tired eyes and too-long toes of overworked carriage horses knows that city life isn’t always so glamorous.
In 1750, Samuel Whitbread, forefather of the U.K.-based Whitbread hospitality company, built up a booming enterprise: A porter, strong and dark, brewed at his “Goat Brewhouse” had gained such popularity that he’d been forced to relocate to larger headquarters in Chiswell Street, where he established the first mass-production brewery in England.
The driving force behind breakneck production at Whitbread’s brewery?
Horsepower.
With porter in demand, horses had succeeded wind, water and oxen as the most effective, highest-yielding power source for Whitbread’s brewery mill, the product of which was the porter’s key ingredient: malt powder.
At the Chiswell Street headquarters, six horses were harnessed to spokes radiating from a central mill shaft and prodded to walk the ceaseless circles that powered the grindstones and reduced malt to its powdered state. Large London breweries like Whitbread’s are estimated to have employed an average of 20 horses for the mill at once, cheaply acquired and cheaply cared for, with even the aged, blind and infirm expected to earn their keep.
Watt’s Initiative
Day in and day out, mill horses circled the shaft, revolving approximately 144 times per hour (2.4 times per minute) if you were to believe the observations of one James Watt, an onlooker of dubious intent.
