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Two more references:

My high school physics book Physics Part One Mechanics by Max J. Irland and E. E. Ensign.

On page 8-1 under Work the units are defined as foot-pounds. Also listed are "joules, kilogram-meters, foot-poundals, inch-ounces, etc."
On page 6-4 under Torque the units are defined as pounds-feet.


In Electrical Engineers Handbook by Pender and McIlwain, John Wiley & Sons, 1947 printing are references also.

On page 1-54 Table 14 units of torque are shown as pound-feet and their metric equivalents.
On the next page 1-55 under Work in Table 16 the units of work are shown as foot-pounds.


My physics professors were the primary persons to emphasize the difference in the unit names.


Now consider the logical reason for different names. Suppose everyone in the world was named John Smith, then the name would serve no useful purpose to distinguish different persons. We use names to identify things. And that is the case here. If I talk about #-ft, then by the name I have an immediate association with torque. Whereas, if I talk about ft-#, then the indication is work.

In the equation
HP = RPM * T / 5252
I have both work and torque. HP is the rate of doing work, 550 ft-#/second. If I apply torque thru a distance (angular), then I do work. If I apply a torque, but do not move, then I am doing 0 work. These are different entities, and deserve different names for both the entities and their units.

If I write the equation
x = f * d
then this can represent many different physical conditions depending upon with what I associate x, f, and d. The equation is good for Ohm's law given the correct association. Or work or torque or temperature, and so on. To make use of this equation I need useful and distinguishable names for the variables and constants.

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