History of the Radiator

In the 1880s, inventor Karl Benz was designing and building "horseless carriages," the precursor to the early automobiles. Using simple internal combustion engines for power, these engines ran hot enough to boil off the water used to cool them at the rate of a gallon an hour. To solve this, Benz designed a system of coiled pipes through which engine-heated water would circulate and cool before returning to the engine to absorb more heat.

Invention and Early Use

In the 1880s, inventor Karl Benz was designing and building "horseless carriages," the precursor to the early automobiles. Using simple internal combustion engines for power, these engines ran hot enough to boil off the water used to cool them at the rate of a gallon an hour. To solve this, Benz designed a system of coiled pipes through which engine-heated water would circulate and cool before returning to the engine to absorb more heat.

Honeycomb Radiators

While Benz's basic radiator solved the original engine-cooling problem, Wilhelm Maybach radically advanced the design of the automotive radiator at the turn of the century. Instead of a simple set of large coiled tubes, Maybach engineered a radiator made of thousands of tiny 6 mm square tubes soldered together in a rectangular honeycomb arrangement. This design allowed coolant capacity to be cut significantly while still providing the cooling capability that engines of the era needed.

Evolution

As engine design evolved, so did the design of the radiator. From the 1920s to the 1940s, large automakers such as General Motors and Ford tested further changes such as altering the shape and size of the radiator core pipes. Other changes included introducing ethylene glycol or antifreeze into the water to lower the water's freezing point and improve heat absorption, adding fans and pumps to the system to force circulation of air and coolant through the radiator system.

Modern Radiators

The brass and copper radiator designs of the past have given way to aluminum honeycomb radiators in modern vehicles. While not quite as good at conducting heat as brass or copper, aluminum allows radiators to be lighter and still provide efficient cooling. Radiators today are used to not only cool engines, but also transmissions and sometimes other components. For example, while one or two suffice for most vehicles, the Bugatti Veyron supercar has ten radiators.