History
Andrew Freeman of Grand Forks, North Dakota, invented the head bolt heater in around 1940 and received a patent for it on November 8, 1949. In 1951, Freeman received another patent on an improved head bolt heater. These early heaters replaced one of the engine's cylinder head bolts with a hollow, threaded shank containing a resistive heating element. Before the block heater was invented, people utilized various means of warming engines before starting them, such as pouring hot water on the engine block or draining the engine's oil for storage inside overnight. Some even shoveled hot coals underneath their vehicle's engine to achieve the same effect.
During the dawn of aviation in pre-war Northern Canada, aviators flew with flight engineers who were responsible for preparing the radial engines for shutdown and startup to mitigate the effects of sub-zero temperatures. The flight engineer was responsible for draining the oil into buckets at night, and pre-heating both the engine and the buckets of oil using a blanket wrapped around the engine and a device known as a blow pot, essentially, a kerosene jet-heater used several hours prior to flight.
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