Do you know WHO INVENTED THE V8 ENGINE?
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- Опубликовано: 6 июн 2020
- Do you know who invented the V8 engine? Which country does it come from? It's got to be America right? It's the home of the v8 and the v8 is the heart of the muscle car, I mean it's common knowledge that the first ever V8 was brought down from heavens by a great bald eagle.
Well actually no. The first ever V8 comes from the country that could be called the national polar opposite of America: Le France! The first ever V8 engine was designed, patented and made functional by a Frenchman called Leon Levavaseur.
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Mr. Leon levasseaur was a genius engineer and inventor. Born in 1863, Levavaseur initially studied fine arts, but later realized that he's a true engine head and switched to studying engineering.
And this was a decision with great timing, because by the time Levavasseur beame 37 and a well versed engineer something big started happening in the world. The dawn of the 20th century was also the dawn of powered flight. The first years of 1900s saw many different Pioneers of powered flight experimenting with countless different airplane designs, but for flight to be powered, you need, well, power and if you want serious power that's gonna keep you in the air for longer than a few seconds, then you need an engine.
And while many pioneers tried to make their engines as small as possible by sacrificing displacement and the number of cylinders with the goal ofreducing weight, Levasaseur had a different idea. He believed an airplane engine didn't have to be miserable and look like a toaster in order to be lightweight, Levassaeur was confident that he could build an engine that could do both, big power and light weight.
But to make that happen he of course needed money. So in 1902 he approached industrialist and money equipped person by the name of Jules Gastambide and presented his engineering vision.
Unlike some of the slightly pathetic engines in pioneer airplanes Levavasseur's idea was much more ambitious. Instead of using 1, 2 or three cylinders, Levavasseur envisioned a configuration of 8 cylinders split into two banks placed 90 degrees from each other. An immortal design that is still popular today, more than a century after it's inception. Needles to say Jules Gastambide was impressed with the idea and decided to finance the project. In a show of gratitude towards Gastambide, Levavasseur names the engine after his daughter Antoinette.
In the same year in 1902 Levavasseur filed for a secret patent and immediately established a workshop to start working on the engine. The next year his first v8 engine was already a functional prototype.
But if you think he stopped at v8, you're wrong. Just like memory card sizes nonchalantly doubled up from 8 to 16 GB, so too did the Antoinette engines, and our good friend Leon built V16 engines too. But even that wasn't enough, Levavasseur also built giant V24 engines for marine applications. some even say he built a v32 engine, while other sources disagree and claim the v32 never really made it past the design phase.
But what's more incredible than the number of cylinders is how ahead of their time these engines were. The engines Leon Levavasseur built weren't just the first v8 or first v16 engines, they were also the first ever engines produced in quantity to feature fuel injection. On top of that they were even liquid cooled. All of that in the first decade of the 1900s.
One of the most impressive Antoinette engines was the one developed for flight Pioneer Alberto Santos Dumont. It was a very small and very light engine whose power to weight ratio wouldn't be surpassed for a long time.
Using this engine Dumont completed the first ever European powered flight longer than 25 meters and became the first person ever to be filmed in an airplane in flight.
Another first powered by this engine was the first ever recorded flight in the UK, carried out by American Samuel Cody, flying a distance of 420m in October 1908
But Antoinette wasn't just a company that was ahead of it's time with engines. It was also the company the developed what could be called the first ever flight simulator. No it didn't have screen or any electronics, it was just a person sitting in a half barrel on a universal joint and "flight instructors" shaking him from the outside. But the pilot trainee in the barrel did have some rudimentary controls that he could use to counter the external forces applied to the barrel. So it might not have been high-tech but it was a design in the right direction.
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Fantastic video. Bravo 👏
Don't know, if either country would appreciate this comment, but America and France are actually more alike, than they are "polar opposites".
Here's an additional "fun fact". Levavasseur was born in 1863, so was Henry Ford.
Wow, you nailed it..! I did considerable research on the Antoinette story when I built a 8' wingspan, radio controlled model of a 1909 version of the monoplane and was faced with building a look-alike replica of it's engine. It was a show stopper when I competed with it for several years. What you've put together here is the finest gathering of information on them, great video and a noteworthy and colorful story.
Thank you!
and for once, nobody mentioned the ford v-8 as being the first.... god I hate that!!!
@thunder lips They were the ones to make the V8 engine the legend !!
@the tax man Not.
@@arkhsm Cadillac was.
Ford's innovation to the V-8 was mostly in improvements in foundry casting the block. That made the V-8 affordable and able to be mass produced.
True, the greatest Ford breakthrough was to make cars mass produced and affordable to average workers. In 1927 a complete running Ford T would cost $300, while a luxury car chassis would cost 20 times more, plus the coach-builder would make a body on demand for the customer.
Ford's first V8 was 1932.. General Motors were building flathead V8.. V12 in 1917..go figure!
Cadillac had its first production V8 was 1914.
@@shakespeare_hall4788 The thing was the Cadillac V-8 was separate castings for crankcase and cylinders. Ford made advances in foundry casting that allowed him to cast the crankcase and cylinders as one piece economically. Ford didn't invent the V-8, Ford made the V-8 cheap enough for the masses
@@joecummings1260 Absolutely!
Leon Levavasseur is my now my idol... hail Levavasseur! Hemi, fuel injection and water cooled!? What a damn genius!
Fière d'être Français !
@@gaboutagirl5991 france invents v8 then ‘Merica saves france with every war they’ve ever had lol fair trade off i guess
Not really a hemi as it lacks the basic advantage of a hemi design. The cross flow of mixture and combustion gasses. So in reality a "pent" roof chamber. But definitely way ahead of anything else at the time. Maybe the Knight " sleeve valve" engines could have been contenders for greatness ?
@@mikecorleone6797 Not really. Lets not forget that the French army stopped the German army in its tracks in 1914 at the Battle of the Marne, 3 years before the US entered World War 1. By the way, many of the French troops, who had been stationed in Paris, were rushed to the Marne front in Renault taxis, the first mass produced cars ever built.
I can't tell you how interesting this video was to me~! I'm a 74 yr. old Hot Rodder from the 60's and I was under the impression that ole' Henry Ford had invented the Flat Head V-8 in 1932 for the Model B Option. I had one in a '33 Ford that I restored but sold it later to move to a different town. Thanks for all your work on this as it must have been quite a chore.
Nothing's a chore when I get a comment like yours
ever heard the term,''when the technology becomes available'',?.theres nothing new today,its just more affordable to make..all ohc,multi valve alloy engines were too expensive to build in production,so were scraped.even gear/desmodronic drive,all these high tech builds were in ferrari,jag,alfa,ect,exotic,expensive cars.we got 2 valves & a pushrod.cheap,easy..
I've been wrenching on engines since about eight, more than fifty years, and didn't know this fact, although I've seen many of the engines, not knowing what they were. This was a most enticing presentation, very interesting, fact filled, and I have enjoyed it tremendously. Thanks for a very professional video regarding this engine, the men, and the birds it flew in. I keep thinking, "I need to build an airplane". Been building motorcycles, race cars all my sixty odd years of life, and now I live in the country, where I could take off and land on the road. Very nice presentation, thanks!
I’m happy for you ya old chap! I’m on the journey to not only wrench but figure out the problem too, and hopefully drive in the big leagues and I I have full determination and drive for it.
And it was a flat plane crankshaft V8 too.
The cross plane crankshaft V8 came nearly two decades later.
A Scottish engineer from Glasgow named D. McCall White who emigrated to the USA, where he was engaged on the design of the first Cadillac V8 engine, the Type 51, introduced in 1914. This engine was designed under the leadership of White as Cadillac's chief engineer 1914-1917, later a vice president of Cadillac. McCall White was hired by American, Henry Leland , Cadillac’s engineer, after Leland’s own flat plane crankshaft 60° V8 didn’t suppress the secondary harmonics he hoped for. Leland knew McCall White’s V-engine expertise from his employment as chief engineer at David Napier Ltd in Acton, London and previously Daimler Ltd in Coventry back in England. McCall White solved the balancing forces of second order harmonics of the V8 without resorting to using two pairs of Lanchester balance shafts per bank on flat plane crankshaft but by using a carefully counterweighted cross plane crankshaft, and so the world’s first cross plane crankshaft for a V8 was engineered by a Scottie. Perhaps we should call it the McCall White V8 architecture, and the flat plane crank V8 the Levavasseur V8 architecture.
The McCall White’s Cadillac V8 engine was made of five castings: one crankcase, two cylinder blocks and two cylinder heads. He became chief engineer and later vice-president of the Cadillac company.
Perhaps the next discussion could be the awkward and challenging design of the V6. A young engineering graduate, Francesco De Virgilio, was hired at Lancia in 1939 and put to routine tasks. He soon attracted management’s attention by improving and simplifying the suspension of a Lancia model. De Virgilio spent the summer of 1943 analyzing the vibration of alternative V-angles for a possible V6 engine. He devised flying arms to splay the crank pins apart by 60°, I’ve always called it the
De Virgilio V6 crankshaft arrangement to honour a great engineer.
But V6's need a balance shaft to overcome secondary moments.
@@andyharman3022 4 cylinder engines can have balance shafts. V6 engines seem to be massively successful right now, although there are some amazing 4 cylinder engines too.
After he developed and implemented his engine, the other folks collectively exclaimed, "We could have had a V-8." Cheers!
I never fail to learn from and enjoy your videos. Your presentation is absolutely engrossing and no matter what kind of day I'm having, watching one of your videos always makes my day better. Thank you for all of the time and effort you put into researching and creating your videos. Excellent video good sir, as always!
"...in the talons of a bald eagle." Cleetus would be proud
A bald eagle with a MULLET!😂
Hellll yeah brother!
Don't know, if either country would appreciate this comment, but America and France are actually more alike than "polar opposites"!
@@sparky6086 I agree. The people of France have more in common with the people of the USA than either of us has with our own government, for example.
@@sparky6086 really????
Fuel Injection in the early 20th Century...
Sounds like some Sci-Fi stuff.
They had superchargers in the 30s so.....
Good lord what's up with that fitment??
@@THESLlCK They also had nitrous, methanol injection, turboschargers and jet engines in the early 1940s.
First Diesel engine use mechanical injector in 1894
dies ist kein Name exactly. Along with rocket axles. If you know, you know.
I find it so satisfying that someone who academically swapped horses midstream and chose engineering as his passion turned into such a brilliant designer. Great piece of history many thanks Driving 4 answers
I seriously knew almost none of this and it's totally amazing.
Ridiculous how advanced that V8 design was compared to engines to come for the next 50-70 years at least.
Last P.S. Samuel Franklin Cody looked like an absolute badass.
Cody was an incredible showman and entertainer. A bit of a 1900s version of Evel Knievel. He died piloting one of his inventions. He's def worth googling.
it's really not... especially as you're comparing it to engines 50+ years later. i don't see what you think is so advanced about it. for it's time, maybe... but definitely not later engines. even carbureted flathead ford v8s would far surpass the 80hp mentioned here. maybe he did better, and like i said, for it's time it was fairly advanced. but overhead cams and even better carburetion were around by the 30's, let alone into the 50's and 60's. at the beginning of the 20th century carburetors were horrible, but the piston engine was still in it's infancy really. some of them were nothing more than a rag for a wick soaked in gas, so anything that actually tried to atomize fuel in the inlet or combustion chamber was better. but fuel injection wasn't nearly as advanced either. and it has the exhaust and intake both to the inside, that's incredibly ineficient. probably didn't make as big of a deal not having a common intake plenum, but the air entering each cylinder still has to make a 180 degree turn to exit, with no help from intake runner pulse and likely no scavenging. it has advanced concepts, but the germans would very soon blow it away.
@@salvadordollyparton666 K.
From my perspective, he most certainly was such. He was a pioneer in many fields, like so many others of those decades. i've worked on engines all my life, and was shocked by some of this, had no idea.
@@johnmcclain3887 Yeah was all very cool news to me!
Your videos are great, dude!!!! I love the knowledge you pass on to all of us. Thank you very much for them, and keep the coming!!!
Did I learn something new? Absolutely YES. What I love about your videos is that you combine history, technology, science and so many other things to make a must see video every time. Thank you heaps
The genius of the Wright brothers was their emphasis on control surfaces; they'd already figured out lift/drag stuff. And they designed and made their own engines because there was nothing around that had a good enough power/weight ratio. And their planes were pretty sturdy for the time. All these early pilots, but the two American brothers ( My country Canada with J.A.D. McCurdy was in 1909-you try flying a plane with Hockey sticks, eh.) were the real actual inventors of the airplane. It's funny, how the Americans like to brag so much, that they don't make mythical type heroes out of the two American men that actually invented the airplane. (Maybe because there was no war about them.) Nice video.
Read the book Glenn Curtiss ,Pioneer of Flight .The Wright bros plane could not get off the ground without its weighted Derek with cables.The engine was too weak .Read Glenn Curtiss biography n you will learn something about the Wright n history of early flight !
@@williamwilliams3411 The "Wrights needed a catapult" story was overblown. Yes, their engines and propellers were barely enough to get the early Flyers into the air, but even today lightly built or overloaded planes will struggle with bad density-altitude conditions. The actual first flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903 was from a simple rail for take off - no cables, no derricks, all Wright engine power.
Don't believe all the Glenn Curtiss propaganda. He was pitted against the Wright Brothers over patents and government attention for years in the early age of aviation. Those patent settlements and the Wrights personal lives eventually led to the merger and formation of the Curtiss-Wright corporation.
Love the line " He needed money don't we all"
Sounds like little boy blue in Andrew Dice Clay's standup.
His need and your need are 2 totally different need
This channel is such high quality and entertainment!
Don't know if I can believe this v8 story...
@@jannordlund6153 Its fact, the french build the first V8
Say what you like about the French, they have undeniably been responsible for a great deal of the world's greatest innovations - tend to think 'out of the box' of conventional concepts.
Yes, they do think outside the box, sometimes way outside the box 😅.
And back to front.
Everyone says what they like about the French. What are they going to do?
@@stupidhead9117 we're going to be proud! Something we never usually are 🤣
@@stupidhead9117 wave the white flag.
This is fantastic! I love history and I love V8s. It’s amazing how smart they were, the engineers of old.
Hp by itself is almost a useless measurement.
50hp sounds impressive until you realize it's only at 1100rpm!
That's 50hp, 239 lb ft tq, @ 1100 rpm!
That's insane!
Hp by itself is the most important metric. you can make all the torque in the would with gearing.
@@vmark1111 HP is just an instantaneus picture. most important is the torque curve, it must be beefy from low to high rpm then you have a great engine
This is an excellent video. Very informative and very imaginatively put together. Thank you very much. Well done!
how no CAD in those times...Cardboard Aided Design :P
No cardboard. I read wiki on cardboard. Cardboard, although created in mid 1800's, but probably not available as used cardboard boxes until some time after 1908.
i'll Antoinette swap my MX5
It'll turns out and makes it even sexier
1UZ🤣🔥
The first V8 to be fitted to a roadgoing passenger car was the 1905 Rolls-Royce 3535cc engine, a 90 degree V8 with square bore and stroke.
An Ader motor car with a V8 engine ran the the Paris Madrid road race of 1903.
I literally thought you meant it has square pistons for a second there LOL - its early in the morning here...
But how does it handle boost?
Really good stuff man! These videos are killin' it.
V-8 were complicated and expensive. Ford managed to patent a SINGLE cast V-8. Making it cheaper and simpler.
@the tax man and 20 years later...
Excellent video brother.
Keep up great work
Nice video my brother! Really enjoying your channel. Sharing with my sons as well, I think they will both enjoy the content and be enriched beyond what I'm also teaching them about all things motorsports.
10:00 it's just weird how similar a modern OHV V8 is in appearance to the 1906 Antoinette OHV V8, down to the ignition and the port fuel injection.
A primitive LS
Love the satire man. Very well written. Super informative man , love it
Hats off to you young man. I truly enjoyed your presentation.
Enjoyed the video, keep it up🔥
Extreme informative! Thank you sir!
Awsome video & outstanding historic research and presentation!!. Many thanks!!.
Please, keep up your great work!🤗👌
Very interesting episode... The French people did (and still do) have great engineers... The vacuum operated intake valves are very interesting.... This engine looks a lot like the Curtis OX-5 engines, and I'm wondering if Curtis received some ideas from these Antoinette designs... This was an extremely advanced design for that time, Hemi-Heads, Mechanical fuel injection (maybe a spray bar-IDK), Liquid cooling, Aluminum Crankcase, and 0.01 mm tolerances...I'm wondering why they chose to make the Pistons from cast iron, instead of aluminum? Maybe because the Aluminum back then could not control heat as we'll as more advanced aluminum alloys that came out later, IDK... A very cool episode indeed!!! This reminds me of a plane in the movie 'Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines' which was flown by James Fox (Richard)....
Being French, I'll pardon yours! Very nice and informative video! I'm a Ford V8 lover for over 30 years, always assumed (wrongly) that Ford was the first... Merci for la correction!
Lots of V8s before Ford, but they were very expensive to manufacture.
What Ford pioneered was casting the crankcase and cylinders in one piece which saved a lot of machining and made the V8 affordable.
I guessed that Glenn Curtis designed and built the first V-8, man was I wrong!! And fuel injection Wow! Freaking awesome....
look up old jag,mercedes,ferrari,alfa,engines,how they were built,70 yrs ago.full alloy,multi valve,fuel injected,gear driven,ohc, engines.
@@phantomwalker8251 forgive my curiosity and silly question: what makes American cars keep using OHV valvetrain until today and if muscle cars are high performance cars, why they're mostly use carburetors rather than fuel injection when other V8s are already built in OHC design with fuel injection in the same era (60's and 70's)?
Very good and interesting video. Can you overview V16 engine's balance and maybe other exotic engines layout like opposed-piston engine, please!
That's a "STEAM PUNK" wet dream engine! It manages to appear both rugged and lithe. Impressive as it is sublime. Wish we could hear it on song.
Excellent and very interesting, thank you for your well researched video!
Thanks mate
Great video
Very entertaining and informative
Ship captain from every Disney Movie? 😆
Very educational and very entertaining! Keep up the good work. I learned something and laughed a lot.
Great stuff. Very interesting and enjoyable.
Very interesting history lesson! Thanks buddy!
Very informative! Thank you!
Fantastic and entertaining story telling!
Thxs for posting and your good presentation 😎 , really enjoyed it .. and learnt some interesting facts maximum respect, from an old guy in the UK ☺
Again Never failed to amuse & educate me .. & this is why am a subscriber since day one
Thanks!! I really enjoyed learning how advanced the French were so long ago.
You are the best! Great info and I love your accent! Cheers
really cool, good vid!
Amazing video! I love the way you are pronouncing these french names BTW
I read Quinten Reynolds' They Fought for the Sky in the 1950's. WWI fighters, bombers, and pilots. Advancements in aircraft, engines, and tactics were also covered. Amazing stuff. The book presented the pronunciation of the name as - LayVoVaSeeYea. Correct? Don't know, but it rolls off the tongue easily. Great presentation. Learned even more from your video.
Thanks
Nice work, great lesson.
Thanks for sharing!
Always learn something new here, thanks dood.
The LS series grandmother was named Antoinette
They started with "Alice" but then, before going to market, thought it was too girly and changed it to LS. Also, they were afraid of associations with "Wonderland" driving to jokes about things miraculously working and keeping you wondering, especially jokes from the fix or repair daily camp, that would have led to general mishap.
Thanks for the education.
Nice history lesson, thanks!!!
very, VERY good and informative video! a real joy to watch.. makes me hate the clickbait junk videos even more. keep it up!
Yes very interesting and educational thank you for sharing ur time!!
I learned something new here. Something big and new, and relevant to my interests. Thank you!
Great video. Thanks.
Not only informative but entertaining. Thanks.
Thanks for that! I had always thought it was Scripps-Booth that had come up with the first V8. Always something new....
Very interesting! Thank you!!
Great video!
We need a iconic engines on the 71 and 92 series Detroit. Really enjoyed the video
Nice, thanks. I knew some of this, but well put together.
Thank you for this very informative, high production value video. You look very familiar from another channel.
Great work Sir thank you
Engineering a crankshaft and camshaft for a V-32 would be quite the feat d'engineering! Very informative presentation. Thank you, driving 4 answers.
I just got an education today - Awesome video thank you
Really entertaining and lots of info, you are getting very good at this RUclips thing.
Awesome content
very interesting video! great informations
Thank you.. that was really cool.
Well made and informative video, thank you! Pls, Hispano-Suiza V8 next maybe? :)
the amount of research in these video is astonishing. You're french pronunciation is often good, coming from a french canadian.
Excellent content and presentation - most informative and enjoyable .Richard. Yorkshire. England
Thank you Richard!
Allot.of.people,don't.henery,ford,was,
partner,witn,cadilac.before,the.big.gm buyout.he.was.invold,in.cadilacs.v.8.from,the,start. he,had,to.sel
Lathe.golbel banker .wanted,ford.gone,the.greedy.power.hungery,world.bankers.would.try.to.put you out,of,business.if.they,didn't.rule,you.that.why ford,built.lincon,.and,waited,to,build.him.v.8..and it.was,the best..
Finally! I was able to find out from who and where the V8 engine originated from.
Very good video!!! Very informative with some good jokes mixed in.
Good stuff,
Thanks
Fun fact: the croissant was actually invented in Vienna during the Turkish siege...
This guy cracks me up......love it.....
Excellent.Always thought v8 was made designed patented in USA.Now i know the origin of the V8.
Great video, informative and funny
And what about the first combustion engine? Can you make a video about it!!
2000 years ago, Greece: ruclips.net/video/RDABtbUXzYs/видео.html
@stoeger 2 Oh, you mean an internal combustion engine. That was not the work of a single person, several contributions during XVIII and XIX century brought what we know to be the internal combustion engine, Otto and Diesel and all the other less known variations on the theme.
"I need le moneyeaux"
SAME, dawg.
The French word 'monnaie' means coins, small change
Pashak de Scilly Oui Oui baguette decaptiationeux le surrendeurrè
"I need le moneyeaux". xD Very interesting video! Thank you! :)
This was actually very interesting
Really informative prog. Great research and pics. Which brings me to this question. What is the aircraft behind Monsieur L and the other two chaps? It's a large biplane with an equally large radial engine, and it looks to be from the post Great War era. 1920 perhaps. I'd be very interested to hear from anybody who may know. Thanks for the great show.
Great video!🔧🔧😁
This guy is bright.
This guy is good.
Thank you for all the terrific information.
I wish Honda would make a V8 engine just to show what they can do, hahaha.
P.S. Léon def had the appropriate amount of beard and scowl to invent the V8!
P.P.S. It's LA France and your first pronunciation during the Warning was best. :P
P.P.P.S. I know you probs know that, but all your little French jokes were great.
they did in F1
they built one of the most amazing sounding v10's so.....
@@THESLlCK I guess I was thinking more for road going vehicles.
@@802Garage Doubt they'll invest into something like that, new waters for the domestic brand. All I know is that they need an actual sports car.
@@THESLlCK Oh yeah they've intentionally avoided V8s forever because they consider them unnecessary. They aren't really wrong, hahaha.
Loved this video. A lot of first were done in aviation.
The problem with vacuum actuated intake valves is, that they rely on a pressure difference which drops with higher altitude. So the Antionette engine was never suited for altitudes over a 150m as it would quickly loose power.