Rudolph Diesel Biography

Rudolph Diesel (1858 – 1913) was a German engineer that constructed a brand new kind of internal combustion engine that was named after him.


An Engineer Can Succeed in Anything

This person constructed an engine that conquered the world, an engine moving trains, vessels and cars. When hearing the word “diesel” the people scarcely perceive it as a German surname, but only as an engine. But in fact that was a real person, a happy and unhappy person at the same time.

He was born in Paris on March 18 1858 and the only thing that distinguished him among other Paris street boys was an unusual neatness of his poor garments. He loved Paris and knew the city really well, since his father, being a bookbinder, sent him to deliver books to many addresses all across the city. They lived as thousands of other Paris citizens and their meal for today depended on how they worked the day before. They also spent their weekends in the common manner and nobody ever recalled they were Germans, not Frenchmen.

Then the War began and their ethnicity was recalled. The faults of Basen and McMahon led to outbursts of xenophobia and discrimination all across the capital. Suddenly they started treating the Diesel family as second-sort people, as “German pigs”. Diesel was only 12, yet he already suffered being discriminated and questioned how could they persecute a person for the religion one chose; how could they persecute a person for political attitudes one accepted? If one was born as a German no prayers to the God and no vows to political leaders could correct the situation, who should be the one to blame?

Many years later, when he became adult, he was reckoned he had 2 motherlands that would accept him – Germany and France. But in fact he had no motherland…

Havre, a sailing vessel with refugees, reticent and cautious German speech, open coasts of England. In several months father persuaded Rudolph leave his starving family and go to his uncle living in Germany and obtain education in Augsburg. So he was 13 when he was deprived of his family surroundings, although his uncle still supported him financially. This kind of independence made him stale and highly disciplined. He obtained such personal traits as pedantry, scrupulousness, modesty and obstinacy.

The genuine German diligence ripened within his heart. Probably because of his solitude he became the best student of his secondary school, then a polytechnic college and was treated kindly by a visiting professor and invited to Munich to enter a higher technical school.

In spring 1878 in Munich Rudolph had the fateful 45 minute long lecture given by professor Linde (the inventor of refrigerators) that concerned the thermodynamic cycle researched by great Sadi Carno, a marvelous process allowing transfer up to 70% of heating capacity of fuel used. On the margins of his student copybook Rudolph made some quick notes in order to ...