We haven't had a thread about horses as transportation for a while...

An apparently we still don't.

 

For reasons that are beyond my comprehension, this issue has always fascinated me.
Maybe it's because I never had to deal with it, "up close and personal."

The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894
...Nineteenth-century cities depended on thousands of horses for their daily functioning.All transport, whether of goods or people, was drawn by horses. London in 1900 had 11,000 cabs, all horse-powered. There were also several thousand buses, each of which required 12 horses per day, a total of more than 50,000 horses. In addition, there were countless carts, drays, and wains, all working constantly to deliver the goods needed by the rapidly growing population of what was then the largest city in the world. Similar figures could be produced for any great city of the time.

The problem of course was that all these horses produced huge amounts of manure. A horse will on average produce between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day. Consequently, the streets of nineteenth-century cities were covered by horse manure. This in turn attracted huge numbers of flies, and the dried and ground-up manure was blown everywhere. In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day, which all had to be swept up and disposed of. (See Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999]).
In 1898 the first international urban-planning conference convened in New York. It was abandoned after three days, instead of the scheduled ten, because none of the delegates could see any solution to the growing crisis posed by urban horses and their output.




The problem did indeed seem intractable. The larger and richer that cities became, the more horses they needed to function. The more horses, the more manure. Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure. Moreover, all these horses had to be stabled, which used up ever-larger areas of increasingly valuable land. And as the number of horses grew, ever-more land had to be devoted to producing hay to feed them (rather than producing food for people), and this had to be brought into cities and distributed—by horse-drawn vehicles. It seemed that urban civilization was doomed.
Crisis Vanished
Of course, urban civilization was not buried in manure. The great crisis vanished when millions of horses were replaced by motor vehicles….
The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty » The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894 » Print

And I always thought that it was/is Washington, DC, that had/has the horse manure problems…
Nevermind, theirs is a historic and ongoing problem with knee-deep BS.

 

I was amused to pass signs (and actual wagons of Amish) in Missouri

 

Pony Express Quick-Facts



Riders: Approximately 80 young riders were in use at any one time. In addition, some 400 other employees included station keepers, stock tenders and route superintendents.
Salary: Riders were paid $100 to $125 per month.
Qualifications: Age ranged from 11 to mid 40s. Riders had to weigh less than 125 lbs.
Earliest Riders: Johnny Fry (St. Joseph), James Randall (San Francisco), Billy Hamilton (Sacramento)
Youngest Rider: Legend has it that Bronco Charlie Miller was eleven years old when he rode.
Riders Changed: 75 to 100 miles.
Horses Changed:10 to 15 miles.
Speed of Rider: Average 10 miles per hour.
Horses: About 400
Stations: Estimated between 150 and 190 of them. Located every 5 - 20 miles.
Mochila: Saddlebag designed especially to carry mail on the eastern end were made by Israel Landis. The mochila had a hole in the front to fit over the saddle horn and a slit for the cantle behind. At the corners of the mochila were four locked leather boxes called cantinas where the mail was kept.
Route:1966 miles from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.
Through the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah,
Nevada, and California. Crossed Missouri River by Ferry boat, at the foot of Francis Street.
Time:10 days.
Quickest Run: 7 days and 17 hours. The riders were carrying President Lincoln's Inaugural Address.
Total Miles Covered: Approximately 650,000 miles.
Longest Ride: Pony Bob Haslam. rode 370 miles -- Friday Station to Smith Creek Station and back.
Cost of Mail: $5 per 1/2 ounce at first. Later, the price was $1 per 1/2 ounce.
Founders: Russell, Majors, and Waddell. The company was Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Company (C.O.C. & P.P.). The Pony Express was a subsidiary for the freight and stage company.
Dates: April 3, 1860 through October 1861.
Telegraph Completed: October 24, 1861
Success: Proved the Central Route to California was usable year round. The government moved the Overland Mail Company, who had the mail contract, from the southern/Butterfield Route to the Central Route in 1861. Keeping the lines of communication open and the flow of mail going influenced California's remaining in the Union.
Failure: Financially, the Pony Express was a failure. The owners invested $700,000 and left a $200,000 deficit. The company failed to get the government mail contract. The company was sold at auction to Ben Holladay in March 1862. Four years later he sold out to Wells Fargo for $2,000,000.

Pony Express History

 

I've already done my share, shoveling out dad's barns during my youth. He had only one horse, since departed, but plenty of cows. And between allowing the animals to spend plenty of time in the barns, and not dealing with the buildup for quite a few years, it was deep.

The animals are no longer allowed much time in the barns, so the buildup is much more manageable. But he just rebuilt the manure spreader, and is at that age where back problems make it impossible for him to do the shoveling. If you really really want some up close and personal experience ...

I've understood that horse transportation had a significant fatality rate, much more so than even old cars. Horses were easily spooked, then very difficult to control.

On last month's road trip, crossing Nevada's Highway 50, we encountered several Pony Express and nearby telegraph historic sites.

Apparently the Pony Express shut down a mere 4 days after the cross-continent telegraph was completed. Ten day delivery just couldn't compete against a few seconds.

 

contrary to popular belief......horses can't drive

 

One horsepower for continuous duty. The rating is based on the work draft animals could do for a several hour shift.

10 to 15 horsepower for a short time.

 

1 horsepower = 745.699872 watts


The development of the steam engine provided a reason to compare the output of horses with that of the engines that could replace them. In 1702, Thomas Savery wrote in The Miner's Friend[: "So that an engine which will raise as much water as two horses, working together at one time in such a work, can do, and for which there must be constantly kept ten or twelve horses for doing the same. Then I say, such an engine may be made large enough to do the work required in employing eight, ten, fifteen, or twenty horses to be constantly maintained and kept for doing such a work…" The idea was later used by James Watt to help market his improved steam engine. He had previously agreed to take royalties of one third of the savings in coal from the older Newcomen steam engines. This royalty scheme did not work with customers who did not have existing steam engines but used horses instead. Watt determined that a horse could turn a mill wheel 144 times in an hour (or 2.4 times a minute). The wheel was 12 feet in radius; therefore, the horse travelled 2.4 × 2π × 12 feet in one minute. Watt judged that the horse could pull with a force of 180 pounds. So:

power = work/time = force x distance/time = 180 lbf x 2.4 x 2 pi x 12 ft/1 min = 32,572 ft lbf/min
This was rounded to an even 33,000 ft·lbf/min.

Others recount that Watt determined that a pony could lift an average 220 lbf (0.98 kN) 100 ft (30 m) per minute over a four-hour working shift. Watt then judged a horse was 50% more powerful than a pony and thus arrived at the 33,000 ft·lbf/min figure.

Engineering in History recounts that John Smeaton initially estimated that a horse could produce 22,916 foot-pounds per minute. John Desaguliers increased that to 27,500 foot-pounds per minute. "Watt found by experiment in 1782 that a 'brewery horse' was able to produce 32,400 foot-pounds per minute." James Watt and Matthew Boulton standardized that figure at 33,000 the next year.

Most observers familiar with horses and their capabilities estimate that Watt was either a bit optimistic or intended to underpromise and overdeliver; few horses can maintain that effort for long. Regardless, comparison with a horse proved to be an enduring marketing tool.

When considering human-powered equipment, a healthy human can produce about 1.2 hp briefly and sustain about 0.1 hp indefinitely; trained athletes can manage up to about 2.5 hp briefly and 0.3 hp for a period of several hours.
Horsepower - Wikipedia

 

Way back in the dark ages when I took high school physics, one lab exercise was timing how long it took each class member to run up a flight of stairs. Based on students weight x elevation gain, most of the boys were able to exceed 1 horsepower.

 

Interesting... what was the elevation gain?

We have an outside tower with 96, 9" steps on our campus.



Maybe I'll write up a Human Power Output activity for my 6-8 grade STEM summer campers.
Gotta say though, we'll have to see a 10-15 degF reduction in the typical mid-day OAT this week of 90-100 degF for the last few days before I suggest it. ;-)

 

It was one floor of an old high ceilinged high school building. About 14 or 15 feet.

 

Yes, but is it mere coincidence that the horse's hind-most part
shown above is all too often seen behind the wheel?

 

Am I the only one here who reads Hark! a Vagrant!?