The name sounds so German you would think he was born in Munich or Heidelberg, but no, he was born in Paris, to German immigrants there, in 1858. A few weeks later he was given away to a farmer family in Vincennes, only to be returned nine months later.
How this experience informed his later development is unknown but when the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 the family was forced to leave France. Why they did not return to Germany but instead went to London is also a curious development. Instead, they sent young Rudolf back to Germany to live with relatives in Augsburg. At age 14 he wrote a letter to his parents saying he wanted to be an engineer.
For what it's worth, this incident reminds me of a joke, if I may digress here.
What is European Heaven? British humor, French cuisine and German engineering.
What is European Hell? British cuisine, French engineering and German humor.
To verify the facts of these stereotypes, my father wished me to also be an engineer, so while in high school I was encouraged to study German.
Because he understood thermodynamics and the practical limits of fuel efficiency he knew that steam power wastes as much as 90% of the power potential of the fuel. This knowledge is what inspired him to do whatever it would take to develop the engine that now bears his name.
Diesel power is the result of applied science, at the dawn of an emerging scientific era. The first successful Diesel engine, now on display at the German Technical Museum, ran in 1897.
There's little doubt in my mind that Rudolf Diesel would be astonished to see how far his original ideas have been developed and the power supplied by a diesel engine today
FYI-The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to the mechanical compression (adiabatic compression); thus, the diesel engine is a so-called compression-ignition engine (CI engine). This contrasts with engines using spark plug-ignition of the air-fuel mixture, such as a petrol engine (gasoline engine) or a gas engine (using a gaseous fuel like natural gas or liquefied petroleum gas).
ReplyDeleteA little more info: Diesel engines work by compressing only the air. This increases the air temperature inside the cylinder to such a high degree that atomised diesel fuel injected into the combustion chamber ignites spontaneously. With the fuel being injected into the air just before combustion, the dispersion of the fuel is uneven; this is called a heterogeneous air-fuel mixture. The torque a diesel engine produces is controlled by manipulating the air-fuel ratio (λ); instead of throttling the intake air, the diesel engine relies on altering the amount of fuel that is injected, and the air-fuel ratio is usually high.
ReplyDelete