Rudolf Diesel

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Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (German: ['di?zl?] (listen ); 18 March 1858 – 29 September 1913) was a German inventor and mechanical engineer, famous for the invention of the Diesel engine, and for his suspicious death at sea.

Diesel was the namesake of the 1942 film Diesel.

Early life and education

Diesel was born at 38 Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth in Paris, France in 1858 the second of three children of Elise (née Strobel) and Theodor Diesel. His parents were Bavarian immigrants living in Paris. Theodor Diesel, a bookbinder by trade, left his home town of Augsburg, Bavaria, in 1848. He met his wife, a daughter of a Nuremberg merchant, in Paris in 1855 and became a leather goods manufacturer there.

Shortly after his birth, Diesel was given away to a Vincennes farmer family, where he spent his first nine months. When he was returned to his family, they moved into the flat 49 in the Rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi. At the time, the Diesel family suffered from financial difficulties, thus young Rudolf Diesel had to work in his father's workshop and deliver leather goods to customers using a barrow. He attended a Protestant-French school and soon became interested in social questions and technology. Being a very good student, 12-year-old Diesel received the Société pour l'Instruction Elémentaire bronze medal and had plans to enter Ecole Primaire Supérieure in 1870.

At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War the same year, his family was forced to leave, as were many other Germans. They settled in London, where Diesel attended an English-speaking school. Before the war's end, however, Diesel's mother sent 12-year-old Rudolf to Augsburg to live with his aunt and uncle, Barbara and Christoph Barnickel, to become fluent in German and to visit the Königliche Kreis-Gewerbeschule (Royal County Vocational College), where his uncle taught mathematics.

At the age of 14, Diesel wrote a letter to his parents saying that he wanted to become an engineer. After finishing his basic education at the top of his class in 1873, he enrolled at the newly founded Industrial School of Augsburg. Two years later, he received a merit scholarship from the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic of Munich, which he accepted against the wishes of his parents, who would rather have seen him start to work.

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Career

Carl von Linde, one of Diesel's Munich professors, was one of the group's scholars. In July 1879, Diesel was unable to enroll in his class because he was sick with typhoid fever. He gained practical engineering experience at the Sulzer Brothers Machine Works in Winterthur, Switzerland, as he nears the next examination date. Diesel earned his highest academic distinctions in January 1880 and returned to Paris, where he supported his former Munich professor, Carl von Linde, in the planning and construction of a modern refrigeration and ice plant. Diesel took over the plant a year later.

Diesel married Martha Flasche in 1883 and went to work for Linde, winning numerous patents in both Germany and France.

Diesel, along with his wife and children, and Eugen, joined Rudolf Jr. and Eugen in Berlin in early 1890 to take over Linde's corporate research and development staff and serve on several other corporate boards. He expanded beyond refrigeration because he wasn't allowed to use the patents he created as an Linde employee for his own use. He began working with steam, and his studies into thermal protection and fuel efficiency led him to the development of a steam engine using ammonia vapor. The engine exploded and nearly killed him during tests, but not before. The tenacity of iron and steel cylinder heads was tested during his study into high compression cylinder pressures. During a run in, one of them burstted. He spent many months in a hospital, followed by health and sight problems.

Diesel intended to develop an internal combustion engine that would meet the Carnot cycle's highest theoretical thermal efficiency ever since attending Carl von Linde's lectures. He worked on this theory for several years, and in 1892, he considered his theory to be finished. Diesel was issued the German patent DRP 67207 this year. He published a treatise entitled The Construction of a Rational Heat-Engine to Replace the Steam Engine and the Combustion Engines in 1893, which is the same as 1892. This treatise provided the basis for his research into and design of the diesel engine. Diesel had realised that his initial assumption was incorrect by summer 1893, prompting him to submit another patent application for the amended theory in 1893.

Diesel was conscious of thermodynamics and the societal and practical constraints that fuel efficiency poses. In a steam engine, he discovered that up to 90% of the fuel available is wasted. His interest in engine development was motivated by the desire for much higher efficiency ratios. Fuel was injected at the end of the compression stroke and was ignited by the high temperature resulting from the compression. Heinrich von Buz, the director of Maschinenfabrik Augsburg, Augsburg, gave Rudolf Diesel the opportunity to try and develop his ideas from 1893 to 1897.

The first commercial diesel engine, the 250/400, was officially tested in 1897 and is now on view at the German Technical Museum in Munich.

Diesel obtained patents for his style in other countries, including the United States.

In 1978, he was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.

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