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The unit of horsepower was developed by James Watt, and he really was trying to come up with an accurate estimate of the sustained power output of a horse. That's because, at the time Watt was trying to market his steam engines, horses were the draft animal of choice. Factory owners knew how many horses they needed to run their factories, so 'horsepower' was a convenient unit to rate steam engines.Watt wasn't the only person to make such a comparison. According to Engineering in History:Smeaton had estimated more precisely that the mechanical effect which a horse could produce amounted to 22,916 pounds raised one foot high in one minute against the force of gravity. Desaguliers increased the amount ot 27,500 foot-pounds. And Watt found by experiment in 1782 that a "brewery horse" was able to produce 32,400 foot-pounds per minute. The next year Boulton and Watt standardized the figure at 33,000 ft-pounds per minute [550 ft-lbs/s] in order to classify their engines for sale. By 1809 this was generally accepted as equivalent to 1 horsepower, and so it is today.There was a Scientific Correspondence to Nature back in 1993 by R.D. Stevenson and Richard J. Wassersug, Horsepower from a horse, that looked into the accuracy of Watt's estimation of horsepower. Watt's actual estimation came from observing horses driving a mill wheel over a day's work (2.5 revolutions per minute at 24 ft diameter at 180 lb of force). Stevenson and Wassersug researched recommendations from the 1800s and 1900s. One source recommended "that a draught horse should pull 10 per cent of its body weight at a rate of 2.5-3 miles [per hour] (10-hour working day) to maintain health and vigor." Other sources were in line. And according to Stevenson and Wassersug, that does indeed work out to around 1 hp.But what about short bursts of activity? Well, Stevenson and Wassersug looked into that, too. They found data from the 1925 Iowa State Fair indicating peak output of around 12 – 14.9 hp. Some back of the envelope calculations they performed were in line with these numbers (50 W/kg of muscle mass), and roughly in line with the power output per body weight of human athletes.So, for an average draft horse, 1 hp does seem to be a reasonable estimate for how much power they can put out continuously over a full day's work. But for short bursts of activity, they can significantly exceed that, up to around 12 – 15 hp by at least one estimate.

This Man's Job: Make Bill Gates RicherSecretive Money Manager Michael Larson Helped Microsoft Co-Founder's Fortune Balloon to $82 BillionINVESTMENTS THAT HELPED MAKE BILL GATES RICHERIn 2013, Mr. Gates and other buyers paid $161 million for the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco. The hotel is now valued at about $200 million, positioning Mr. Gates for a profit if he decides to sell. JOHN SUTTONInvitations to a dinner party from Bill and Melinda Gates at their mansion near Seattle in February included an unusual request: Wear pink or platinum. Spotlights installed for the occasion bathed the room in a pink glow.Mr. Gates raised his glass to toast the guest of honor, Michael Larson, who sat nearby wearing a pink button-down shirt, his favorite color. The Microsoft Corp. co-founder said Mr. Larson has his "complete trust and faith," according to people who were there."Melinda and I are free to pursue our vision of a healthier and better-educated world because of what Michael has done" for the past 20 years, Mr. Gates told about 40 dinner guests. Because of Mr. Larson, the world's richest man said, he sleeps well at night.The arrangement is simple: Mr. Larson makes money, and Mr. Gates gives it away. Since 1994, the 54-year-old Mr. Larson has managed Mr. Gates's investment empire, mostly through a firm called Cascade Investment LLC.Few people know much about Mr. Gates's assets or Mr. Larson's tactics—and the two men want to keep it that way. Real-estate investments, which range from the fancy Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Mass., to a 490-acre ranch in Wyoming once owned by William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, are often cloaked in nondescript names to make it harder to trace the deals back to Mr. Gates.Cascade's headquarters are in an unmarked building in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland. Mr. Larson is so protective of his boss that he used to be nicknamed "the Gateskeeper," says someone who worked with him. Employees who leave often sign confidentiality agreements barring them from talking about Cascade, people familiar with the matter say.Mr. Gates's net worth has swelled to about $82 billion from $5 billion since he hired the former bond-fund manager and gave him autonomy to buy and sell investments as he sees fit. In addition to Cascade, which holds most of the billionaire's personal fortune, Mr. Larson oversees the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's $41 billion endowment.Cascade doesn't publicly disclose its performance results, but people familiar with the firm say it usually churns out steady annual gains. Because of Mr. Larson's relatively conservative strategy, Cascade's losses when the financial crisis hit in 2008 were smaller than the 27% drop by the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the full year, people familiar with the results say.Since 1995, Mr. Larson has delivered a compound annual return of 11% for the Gates Foundation and two predecessors, outperforming the S&P 500 stock index by more than one percentage point.Mr. Gates, 58, would be worth about the same if he had kept all the Microsoft stock he got after starting the company in 1975. Mr. Gates owned a 45% stake when Microsoft went public in 1986. The shares are now worth about $150 billion, excluding dividends. Microsoft shares have nearly tripled in the past five years.But Mr. Gates has sold nearly $40 billion of Microsoft stock since 1994 as part of an effort to diversify his investments. The Gates Foundation also has given $30 billion to charitable causes.Messrs. Larson and Gates declined to comment on their relationship, but people who know them say it has evolved into a bond that is crucial to the billionaire's philanthropy. Mr. Larson's many profitable investments on behalf of Mr. Gates and sales of some of his Microsoft shares have increased the size of donations by Mr. Gates and his family to the Gates Foundation.That means more money can be plowed into the foundation's mission to fight disease and improve education in the developing world.Bill and Melinda Gates plan to donate 95% of their wealth to the foundation, the world's largest philanthropic organization. In addition to $28 billion from Mr. Gates, its endowment includes $12 billion in gifts from Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Warren Buffett."They're not two buddies, for sure," says Steve Walsh, former chief executive of Legg Mason Inc.'s Western Asset Management unit, about Messrs. Gates and Larson. They rarely mingle socially, people close to them say.Mr. Walsh says he was struck by how much effort Mr. Gates put into the dinner party for Mr. Larson at the former Microsoft chief executive's 66,000-square-foot mansion on the edge of Lake Washington. The reference to platinum on the invitations was a nod to the metal's 20th-anniversary symbolism."It was almost tender—and endearing," says Mr. Walsh, who has known Mr. Larson for decades.The Wall Street Journal pieced together a snapshot of Mr. Gates's investments from interviews with more than two dozen people familiar with Cascade, securities filings that detail some holdings of the firm and real-estate records. Few of Cascade's investments have been publicly announced.The Wyoming ranch is part of a bet by Cascade on the steep rebound in real-estate prices since the financial crisis. The firm owns at least 100,000 acres of farmland in California, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana and other states—or an area seven times bigger than Manhattan.Cascade also owns more than $24 billion of shares in companies such as Canadian National Railway Co., AutoNation Inc. and Republic Services Inc. The holdings reflect Mr. Larson's value-conscious, buy-and-hold philosophy, mirroring Mr. Buffett, a close friend of Mr. Gates. Canadian National shares are up 207% in the past five years.While much of Mr. Gates's money is in stocks, Mr. Larson has plowed smaller chunks into private equity and other types of adventurous, so-called alternative assets, according to people familiar with the matter. Sizable bets on the bond markets have been reduced recently.Some investments have been duds. In 2007, Cascade and other investors bought a 13% stake in PlanetOut Inc., the publisher of Out magazine and a cruise-line operator targeting gays and lesbians. The company's shares soon sank, and it sold some assets and was acquired by another firm in 2009.Surprisingly, Mr. Gates has few technology-related investments. As of June 30, he held a 3.6% stake in Microsoft, worth about $13.9 billion based on Thursday's closing stock price.Mr. Gates makes his own tech and biotech investments, which aren't held by Cascade. He started digital-image company Corbis Corp. in 1989. Smaller investments include stakes in nuclear-reactor developer TerraPower LLC and meat-substitute maker Beyond Meat.Mr. Gates is updated on all the other investments every other month. "At the end of the day, all decisions go through Michael," says Mike Jackson, chairman and CEO of AutoNation, who considers Mr. Larson a friend. Mr. Larson is a director of the auto retailer, and Cascade owns a 14% stake in AutoNation valued at about $841 million.Mr. Gates decided to hire Mr. Larson after the Journal reported in 1993 that the entrepreneur's money manager at the time had previously been convicted of bank fraud. Mr. Gates was a close friend of the money manager and already knew about the conviction, the Journal said, but began looking for someone new after the uproar.After an extensive screening process, a recruiter invited Mr. Larson to meet Mr. Gates. The money manager had worked for a mergers-and-acquisitions firm and run bond funds for Putnam Investments, now a subsidiary of Canadian insurer Great-West Lifeco, Inc., before striking out on his own.The two men hit it off. Mr. Gates was impressed by Mr. Larson's self-assured yet low-key personality, people familiar with Mr. Gates's thinking say.After taking the job, Mr. Larson decided to go "off the radar," says Roger McNamee, a co-founder of Elevation Partners, a Silicon Valley firm that was an early investor in Facebook Inc. He says Mr. Larson believed a low profile was the best way to approach such high-profile investing following the bad publicity about his predecessor.Mr. Larson farms out more than $10 billion in assets at any given time to roughly 25 outside money managers, partly as a way to drum up new investment ideas. The outsiders aren't told any nonpublic details about the size of Mr. Gates's portfolio or its holdings, people familiar with the matter say.A news release announcing last year's acquisition of the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, a neoclassical gem in Nob Hill, identified only Cascade's co-investor in the $161 million purchase. A publicist for the Charles Hotel said she had no idea Mr. Gates is a co-owner of the hotel."It's an extraordinary tribute to Michael that if you think about Bill Gates and his reputation, you never hear about Cascade," Mr. McNamee says.Married with three children, Mr. Larson prefers Levi's jeans and dark pink shirts. Some current and former employees say he can be brusque and controlling, even deciding the seating chart for the investment firm's annual holiday party.James Floyd, chief investment officer at Claremont McKenna College, a liberal-arts school in California from which Mr. Larson graduated in 1980, says he is "brutally honest, but in a refreshing way. You know exactly where you stand with him." Mr. Larson advises the college's investment committee.Cascade employees are expected to be frugal. Even though Mr. Gates owns nearly half of the Four Seasons Holding Inc. luxury-hotel chain through Cascade, the investment firm's executives stay at less-expensive hotels, even when traveling on Four Seasons business.The $3.8 billion acquisition with Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal came in 2007 near the real-estate market's peak."There's a symbolic value to continually reminding their partners that Four Seasons is a financial investment, not an ego investment," says Philip Maritz, co-founder and president of hotel investment firm Maritz, Wolff & Co. He sold the Four Seasons in Houston to Cascade last year.Mr. Larson also is known as a golf nut who enjoys networking more than working on his backswing. People who know him say he puts immense value on personal relationships, cultivating them with an intensity that can feel tiring.He attends Allen & Co.'s big-name conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, with Mr. Gates.Bill and Melinda Gates also attend Mr. Larson's daylong round-table discussion held every December in Cascade's conference room. Invited high rollers from the finance and corporate worlds discuss themes and topics for the year ahead. Recent guests include Liberty Media Corp. Chairman John Malone, TPG co-founder David Bonderman andEdward Lampert, the hedge-fund manager who is CEO of Sears Holding Corp.Cascade has grown to roughly 100 employees, compared with 1,200 at the Gates Foundation. Mr. Larson likes to hire recent Claremont McKenna graduates. Employees are discouraged from using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media—and from sending email from their work accounts to outsiders who aren't business partners.In 2009, Mr. Larson dispatched a 25-year-old Cascade employee to negotiate the purchase of multimillion-dollar mansions in Jupiter Island, Fla., hoping the firm could squeeze bargains out of homeowners burned by Bernard L. Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme, people familiar with the matter say.The employee was told to say he worked for a Cascade subsidiary called Front Range Investment Holdings LLC, not Cascade or Mr. Gates, these people say. The employee nailed down the purchase of one mansion for $5 million, real-estate records show. It was on the market for $12 million in 2008.Front Range is described on the deed that recorded the purchase as a Colorado limited liability company, and other public records include an address at a post-office in Kirkland, Wash., where Cascade is based.Online real-estate firm Zillow Inc. estimates that the four-bedroom, nearly 12,000-square-foot "European villa" with a private dock is now worth $6.4 million. The mansion is for sale for about $5.3 million. Cascade is willing to walk away with a small profit.http://uds.ak.o.brightcove.com/47628783001/47628783001_4586448579001_4586439397001.mp4Sources: https://www.ft.com/content/ce87f48a-7208-11e5-9b9e-690fdae72044This Man's Job: Make Bill Gates Richer

We were in our 2000 Chrysler Town and Country on our return trip from Estes Park Colorado to Houston Texas via US 287 through the Texas Panhandle.This alternate route, down US287 (instead of IH 25 through Raton NM), was wonderfully rural and unpopulated, uncongested and delightfully relaxing, made especially so because we departed Estes Park at 4 AM MDT. Even the rougher road bits through Oklahoma weren’t too bad and look(!) no traffic. Texas panhandle weather was surprisingly cool and with all the recent rain there were flowers everywhere.As we re-entered the highway from our last rest stop, starting the 90 minute push into Wichita Falls and our hotel, I felt a shudder through the steering wheel, but attributed that to a ripple in the pavement. A few minutes later it happened again and soon after that the tachometer began to swing erratically as the transmission began to 'hunt' and disengage with the engine as it attempted engagement. This went on for a bit, gradually getting worse with our speed slowly dropping. As we dropped below 60 mph I steered onto the shoulder with the right side tires off the pavement and onto the grass and there we stopped, 9 miles outside of Childress TX (yes, very close to BFE). No engagement from the transmission in any gear, including reverse. Oh my, 3:30 pm, on a Saturday of the US Memorial Day holiday weekend.How...interesting.My wife had cell coverage so we called AAA to arrange a tow. The CSR was very helpful and we explored my options which were:1) Tow all the way to Houston- $4,000 ouch. Nonstarter.2) Tow into Vernon TX to a AAA rated dealership – 57 miles and about $300.3) Fix the van and rent a car while leaving the van…hmmmm…18 yrs old and $2-3,000 to fix plus driving to & from then warranty service where? This seemed like a bad idea for a van worth maybe $1500-3000 *running*. If it had died in Houston, yeah. But 500+ miles away? Not so much.4) Trade/abandon the van at the dealership, buy a new (used) something that would hold all our stuff from a long & big minivan….maybe.My wife was never a big fan of the minivan when she had to drive it and I always packed along a big cargo box of roadside repair stuff + tools and sometimes I got to use them. After 18 yrs of service I wasn't necessarily ready to ditch her (the van, not my wife), but the reality of the situation, once you detach yourself from "it's my baby I've worked on for years" was it may be time, in this situation, to get a new ride. (They shoot horses, don't they?)The AAA CSR gave me the number of their rated dealership in Vernon (nothing closer in Childress) but advised me to call now "because they close at 4 pm". So while we waited for the tow to arrive (this at 3:30 in the afternoon on Saturday) I went into project manager mode:1) Called the dealership and got ahold of a sales rep who said he would stay late along with the finance & general managers (sales closes at 6 and our tow might arrive by 5-5:30). Asked them what they had on the lot for under $20K that could hold a lot of stuff- Ford Edge, 2014 (what's an Edge I asked?). Discussed preliminary financing details, couldn’t do cash from the side of the road in rural BFE Texas, but could shoot a photo of my DL & insurance card + SSN for FICO to see what they could do.2) Got a call back from the AAA tow operator asking for location details.3) Had a disabled fellow from Iowa make a uturn (he was SB, same as us) down the road, come back to the crossover spot just ahead of us, pull onto the shoulder and ask us if we needed help. (We were running the engine for AC and to power the cooler so we were fine but he was a blessing just the same)5) Got a call back from the dealership after verifying my financial health and at this point it appeared to get “real” for the sales rep. My wife and I had been digging through the decision tree(s) in the interim and agreed that it made no sense to attempt to get the van back to Houston and a new(er) ride was in order. So from the side of the road, sight unseen (I had no clue what an Edge was), I arranged a test drive and asked to have the financing paperwork setup for our arrival.Tow arrived and loaded the van on the flatbed. All three of us rode into Vernon at 6:45 PM (our 20lb mini-schnauzer was on my wife’s lap). Then I took a test drive and immediately noticed the difference between my old 180 HP van and the Edge’s 285 HP AT THE SAME WEIGHT. One owner, base model without the Ford Sync interface and I fell in love. (0-60 around 7 seconds? hell yeah).Our sales rep and finance manager helped us unload the van and somehow we got everything wedged into place with the seats down and stuffed literally to the roofline, and finally made it into Wichita Falls at 9 pm. A little bit of baggage Tetris on Sunday morning and I was able to make enough room to put up the 40% side of the rear seat so the dog could have his own place and we drove on to Houston.A long series of events had to unfold in proper fashion or this would have turned out much more "interesting"- in the manner of the old Chinese saying of "interesting".