[zozbot234]

Fun fact, a typical horse exerts about 1 horse power of usable work while performing. That's so weird, I'm sure almost no one would've been able to guess that - but it's true.

(To be clear, that's sustained effort over time, not just momentary. Athletically trained humans can do about 1 HP of peak momentary effort, and around 0.3 HP if sustained over time.)

[mikepurvis]

And a horse can do quite a bit more in peak as well— 1 HP is definitely meant to be the long term continuous output of a typical horse under load, especially a consistent load such as turning a millstone.

[loeg]

That's an all-day number. Peak HP/horse is somewhere in the 6-15 range.

[somat]

The funny thing is that a typical horse probably has closer to 2 or 3 horsepower and a big chonkin draft horse up to 4 or 5 times.

James Watt just picked the smallest possible value of horse when defining the unit so he could sell more steam engines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qxTKtlvaVE (donut, How Much Horsepower is a Horse?)

[wiredfool]

Track cyclists (sprinters, world class) do 2KW+ peak for a few seconds at a time. That's potentially ~3HP. (and while doing so, average more than 70kph over a 200m distance)