RUDOLF  CHRISTIAN  DIESEL

  Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel was born on March 18 1858 in Paris France. In 1870, after the start of Franco-Prussian war, the Diesel family became politically unwelcome in France and moved to England. Rudolf was sent to live with an uncle in Augsburg Germany, where he was enrolled in school. 

The young Rudolf Diesel excelled in mathematics and mechanics and earned a scholarship in Polytechnikum University in Munich, Germany. He studied under the famous Professor Carl Von Linde, who pioneered the refrigerator. While studying under Linde he learned that steam engines only reached thermal efficiency of about 10%. Only about 10% of the heat energy generated by steam was converted to usable power, the rest was wasted. 

After Diesel graduated, he moved to Paris, France, married and had three children. He became a thermal engineer of some importance, a connoisseur of the arts, and a social theorist. Despite his social status, he understood the struggle of the working man and often socialized with the men in his trade. 

About 1893 Rudolf Diesel developed the idea for his heat engine, using his knowledge of thermodynamics. 

Burning fuel slowly at high pressure was his idea and in 1893 he received patents from the German government for his concept Verbrennungs-kraftsmaschinen, or heat engine. 
Later that year Diesel built his first prototype, a single cylinder four stroke design. The fuel for this engine was gasoline; gasoline and kerosene were the only fuel available. Gasoline vapor was injected into the cylinder near top dead center using compressed air to force the fuel into the cylinder. After only a short run this engine exploded throwing fragments everywhere. 

Rudolf Diesel later wrote of his experiences: "When I began constructing my engine in the early nineties, the existing method was a complete failure. The enormous pressure generated in my machine, the friction between the moving parts, the magnitude that has never been seen before, forced me to minutely examine the stress on each single organ and to delve extensively into material science. Not even the most secondary detail could be left to chance of ratio or safety factor." 
In 1894 his second prototype was able to obtain an efficiency of 16%, already 6% better than a steam engine at the time. It was quite an accomplishment that his engine even ran under its own power. Testing concluded that the combustion process was irregular and needed attention. Rudolf Diesel was desperate and turned to Robert Bausch for an ignition magneto, hoping to control irregular combustion. It did not help. Diesel finally started to overcome this combustion problem himself when varying the amount of air that he injected with his fuel. 

Rudolf Diesel's third prototype had two injectors, one injector for fuel and the other delivered a mixture of fuel and air. This engine was much better than the previous prototypes, and produced 25 horsepower at 200 RPM. Continued research showed that his heat engine would run almost any fuel from gasoline to peanut oil. Modifications and fine tuning continued until Diesel decided that the engine was ready for production in 1896. The success of this model made him a millionaire, receiving money from patent licensees in France, England, and Russia. He lived an extravagant life-style. But some licensees were not as successful as others. There were some that said his development phase was not complete. He was confident that his engines were ready for market if they were made and maintained to specifications. 

The use of air injection on the early Diesels made an air compressor necessary. Air compressors are heavy and take up lots of space. In addition, Diesel engines themselves were, and still are, large and relatively heavy. These limitations explain why Diesel engines were used first in stationary applications. But, maritime applications began in 1902-03. In 1905, the French navy used diesel engines to power their submarines. In 1906, a Diesel engine was used in a truck. 

When Rudolf Diesel spoke about his "black mistress" (his engine), he praised its efficiency. At a time when air quality was not the hot topic it is today, Diesel was concerned about air pollution. Diesel was also concerned about the plight of the common man. He realized that the industrialized world was not making life easier for the masses, but on the contrary, the workers now had to regulate their lives according to a factory's schedule. 

Diesel was plagued by migraine headaches and developed gout, causing him to wear a special shoe. His posh life-style was catching up with him In 1913; Diesel accepted a consulting job in England. Before he left Germany, he gave his wife an overnight bag and instructed her not to open it for a week. He appeared to be in good spirits. The bag contained 20,000 marks, probably the last of his cash reserves. He boarded a ship bound for England. That evening he ate dinner with friends and retired to his room. The next morning Mr. Diesel was nowhere to be found, but after a search of the boat, his coat was found folded neatly under a deck rail. A few days later another boat found a body floating in the seas, and stopped to remove the personal belongings from the man’s body. The body was left buried at sea. Diesel's family later identified his coin purse and spectacle case, and accepted the death as a suicide. 

Although Rudolf Diesel had his problems and faults, as all people do, he was a world-class engineer and inventor. He invented a new and highly efficient internal combustion engine that was, and still is, vastly superior to its competitors. Mr. Diesel is the father of all compression ignition, direct-injection engines. It is out of respect for Mr. Diesel, his invention, and what we see as the appropriate use of the English language, that we, as do some others, chose to capitalize the name "Diesel" in our articles. Just as it would be inappropriate to not capitalize Mr. Henry Ford's name, we think Mr. Diesel deserves our respect and to have his name capitalized as well. 

The argument can be made that since the word diesel (lower case) has become such a part of the English language that, it represents and even deeper penetration of the engine and diesel technology into our language. We don't totally disagree with this view, but we still prefer to capitalize Mr. Diesel's name.