The history of the first Hemi engine from Dodge is pretty straightforward, but it turns out that the tale behind the first engines with hemispherical combustion chambers requires going down a much deeper rabbit hole. And it's one filled with contradictory claims, famous names, and plenty of random data points. One way to connect the dots, though, starts with Augustus Herring.

Better known for his aviation work -- including a pre-Wright Brothers powered flight in 1899 -- Herring seems to have been working on an engine with hemispherical combustion chambers before 1900, and his shop at the time happened to be located within a separate factory owned by Truscott Marine. Now, it's not clear exactly how it happened, but soon after this, Truscott came out with its own engine featuring hemi heads.

How did the hemi get from boats to cars? In another coincidence, Truscott at the time also had its own foundry, and one of its outside jobs was casting engines for Allie Ray Welch, who had built a sort of semi hemi of his own in 1902. It did have a hemispherical combustion chamber, but non-standard valves and "disc" actuation, so it isn't considered part of the true hemi heritage. And a few years later, in 1905, Welch patented an engine following the same design that went from Herring to Truscott -- and it began appearing in cars from the Welch Motor Car Company. Yet that's still not the whole story.