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Re: Watt's definition of horsepower



Herbert H Gottlieb wrote:
You have done us all a great service with your short essay on the origin
of the term, "horsepower". What was your source of such good information?

Thanks, Herb. The source is a long story. I've been interested in
mining history since childhood, and picked up pieces of the story over
many years. I polished my "essay" last night by scurrying around the
Internet with my trusty search engine. I focused mainly on websites in
the UK ; I think people residing in the locale of a story are more
likely to get the details straight. There's a lot of crap out there to
sift through in order to get to the good stuff.

To keep the long story short, polishing my James Watt article began with
confirmation of the basic outline of the story at The Royal Society,
where Watt had been a fellow (1795-1819):
<http://www.shu.ac.uk/acclaim/royal_society/fellows/fellows_gallery.htm>

And it concluded with the anecdote about the Institution of Civil
Engineers paper which I ran across in a British mining history listserv
posting from last April 12:
<http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/mining-history/>.

Best wishes,

Larry
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Larry Cartwright <exit60@ia4u.net>
Physics and Physical Science Teacher
Charlotte HS, Charlotte MI USA
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