In the mid-1950s, Ronnie Householder (who later headed up Chrysler’s NASCAR program) was the GM forerunner of Vince Piggins and the “Product Performance” group.  He was also a friend of Vic Edelbrock, Sr.  Upon the introduction of the small-block V8 in 1955, Vic Sr. ordered two engines from Householder; having already recognized that this engine could become the cornerstone of the performance aftermarket and he wanted to get a head start on his competition.  At that time, in Culver City, CA, Edelbrock was just down the street from Iskenderian and Hedman.  So Vic provided Isky with some lobe designs (the Isky “E Series” of cams came from Sr.) and brought in Bob Hedman to do some headers. When the 283 was introduced in ’56, Sr. conducted some additional parts designing experiments and was the first person to achieve one hp/cu.in. with a 265, on carburetors and gasoline. He later repeated the feat with a 283 small block running his new cross ram intake manifold. 

Attached here in Vic Jr.’s handwriting (he often ran Edelbrock's old Clayton engine dyno), is the dyno sheet that chronicled the initial feat with the 265 small block achieving 279 HP at 6500 rpm.  Note that Vic was only concerned about hp values with little emphasis on torque or in computing b.s.f.c. data.  When Jim Mcfarland arrived at Edelbrock in 1969, they were still conducting engine dyno tests in that fashion.  It took time to convince Jr. that there might be some additional information helpful to parts design and evaluation.  And on the flow bench, Jr.and Bobby Meeks figured that more flow was always more power, until we developed the Trantula intake under Mcfarland. The Tarantula of course was the first single plane V8 intake which later evolved to the widely copied Victor and Victor Jr. series of single four barrel intakes for hot street and racing applications.