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Diesel
Patent No. 608,845 Internal Combustion Engine |
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French inventor Rudolf Diesel was born in Paris on March 18, 1858. Best known for his invention of the pressure-ignited heat engine that bears his name, Diesel was also an eminent thermal engineer, a connoisseur of the arts, a linguist, and a social theorist.
Diesel's inventions have three points in common: They relate to heat transference by natural physical processes or laws; they involved markedly creative mechanical design; and they were initially motivated by the inventor's concept of sociological needs. Diesel originally conceived the diesel engine as a facility, readily adaptable in size and costs and utilizing locally-available fuels, to enable independent craftsmen and artisans better to endure the powered competition of large industries that then virtually monopolized the predominant power source--the oversized, expensive, fuel-wasting steam engine.
In 1885, he set up his first laboratory in Paris and began his 13-year ordeal of crafting his distinctive engine. At Augsburg, in 1893, his prime model, a single ten-foot iron cylinder with a flywheel at its base, ran on its own power for the first time.
Diesel spent two more years at improvements and on the last day of 1896, he demonstrated another model with the spectacular, if theoretical, mechanical efficiency of 75.6 percent, in contrast the then-prevailing efficiency of the steam engine--10 percent or less. Although commercial manufacture was delayed another year and even then begun at a snail's pace, by 1898, Diesel was a millionaire from franchise fees in great part international.
His engines were powering pipelines, electric and water plants, automobiles and trucks and marine craft and soon thereafter were used in mines, oil fields, factories, transoceanic shipping, and elsewhere.
Rudolf Diesel died in 1913.
The above information was supplied by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc., Room 1D01-Crystal Plaza 3, 2021 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia 22202. Videotapes and printed materials are currently available, including the National Inventors Hall of Fame Book of Inventor Profiles ($3.00).
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