The origin of horsepower – the true story behind the term rev-heads take for granted

As we all settle in and open a new tab to watch ‘the race that stops a nation’, why not impress your friends with a little anecdote of how the measure of horsepower came to be? Sure, we refer to a car’s power output in thousands-of-watts (kW), but somehow the popular imperial measurement of horsepower just sounds so much cooler. Plus, it converts to bigger numbers, and when it comes to power, bigger is better.