The engines invented by this brilliant German engineer have revolutionized the technology, ending the era of bulky and inefficient steam engines. Rudolph Diesel, whose surname gave the name to the engine he invented, mysteriously disappeared while sailing to England. Officially, it is believed that he died, being for some reason outside the ship, but is that so?
Young talent
Rudolph Christian Karl Diesel was born on March 18, 1858 in Paris, the son of the bookbinder Theodor Diesel from Augsburg and Elise Strobel. When the Franco-Prussian war began in 1870, the family had to leave France and move to England, however, life there did not get better either, Diesels were often starving. Rudolph's father invited his 13-year-old son to move to his uncle in Germany and start studying there. The boy understood that it was hard for his father to pull the whole family, so he agreed to leave.
Rudolph had to grow up very quickly, because the young man did not have to count on the financial support of his parents. They themselves were waiting for their son to be able to help them. He was determined to independently punch his way in life, relying only on his perseverance and self-discipline. It is worth noting that Diesel was not a crammer. He thought creatively, quickly and eagerly assimilated new material, and in 1873 he graduated from a real school as one of the best.
Then Diesel continued his education at the Augsburg Polytechnic School, where he was noticed by the professor who lectured there. He invited a talented young man to enter him at the Munich Higher Technical School. In 1880, Rudolph graduated brilliantly with the best results in the history of this educational institution.
The idea of a unique engine
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Why didn't Rudolf Diesel follow in his father's footsteps and become a hereditary bookbinder? Perhaps his choice of purpose in life was influenced by his visits to the technical museum while his family was still living in Paris. Literally every weekend, his father took him to a museum located not far from their home, where he examined steam engines, which at that time were considered the latest achievement of technical thought.
While studying at the Munich Higher Technical School, Rudolf became close friends with the famous German engineer, designer of refrigeration equipment, Professor Karl von Linde. When Diesel completed the training process completely, he got a job in the company of his mentor "Linde Refrigerators". The professor appreciated the abilities of his student so highly that he entrusted him with the position of manager in the Paris branch of the company. Although Diesel has been developing refrigeration equipment for about ten years, he was not left with the idea of creating a fundamentally new and efficient engine for transport and industry.
One day in March 1888, sheltering from the pouring rain in a local museum, Diesel noticed one curious exhibit in it. It was an unusual lighter made 55 years ago by some unknown craftsman. Outwardly, it looked like a syringe and consisted of a glass cylinder and a piston. A small portion of the combustible mixture entered the cylinder, and the piston compressed the air in it to such an extent that the mixture ignited due to the temperature rise. Diesel seemed to have an idea. In a matter of moments, a picture of a fundamentally new engine formed in his head, which subsequently immortalized his name.
It should be noted that at that time there was already an internal combustion engine running on gasoline. In its carburetor, gasoline was atomized and mixed with air, then the combustible mixture entered the cylinder, where it was ignited by a spark. The resulting hot gases pushed the cylinder piston, giving rise to movement. The engine that Diesel conceived was simpler and safer. He did not need expensive and explosive gasoline, he could use fuel oil, kerosene as fuel, even coal dust was suitable. He did not need a spark either, because the fuel was ignited by compression.
Achieved fame and fortune
On February 27, 1892, Diesel applied to the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin for a patent for his engine, and almost a year later, on February 23, 1893, he was issued. It seemed that the scheme of the new engine was already in the head of Rudolf Diesel, all that remained was to embody it in metal and reap the fruits of the ingenious invention, however, it was still far from a really working unit.
All work on the creation of a new engine was carried out at the Augsburg Machine-Building Plant. The inventor managed to get financial support from the companies of Friedrich Krupp and the Schulzer brothers. The first working engine was created only four years later. It weighed five tons, had a capacity of 20 horsepower with an efficiency of 26%. By the way, this engine has survived and is now an exhibit of the Engineering Museum in Augsburg (Germany). He worked on oil refined products. This, of course, greatly alarmed the coal tycoons of the Ruhr, whose profits were slipping into the pockets of the owners of the oil wells. They launched a smear campaign against Diesel in the press, accusing the inventor of quackery and all other sins.
But the engine was too good, and it worked effectively, so all the attacks on Rudolph, on the contrary, attracted even closer attention to his brainchild in different countries. In 1900, Diesel won the Grand Prix at the World Exhibition in Paris. It is curious that in Germany they reacted rather coolly to the engine, but this attitude did not really bother the inventor, because in other countries they showed an increased interest in it. In 1898, the production of Diesel cars was launched in Russia. They were manufactured at the Ludwig Nobel plant in St. Petersburg and at three other factories in other cities. The world's first motor ship, named "Sarmat", appeared in Russia. In 1904, he began his voyage along the Volga, a diesel engine was installed on it, marking the end of the era of steam engines.
Wealth and fame have finally come to Diesel. He bought himself a big house, opened his own diesel engine plant. Already in 1908, it was possible to create a small unit. The first truck was equipped with it. Later, the first locomotive with an engine of this type appeared. Rudolf Diesel's invention found more and more new applications in transport and industry. However, he was first and foremost an inventor, and secondly a businessman. Despite the great demand for its engines, in 1913, when the global financial crisis broke out, it was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Mysterious disappearance
On September 29, 1913, Rudolf Diesel sailed aboard the steamer Dresden for London, where he was going to attend the opening of the new plant of the British company Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing Co., which produces its engines. The steamer departed from Antwerp, there were only a few minutes left before sailing. On the upper deck, Diesel stood in the company of two of his acquaintances - Georg Grace and Alfred Luckmann. They have already registered in the passenger magazine, but the name Diesel has not appeared there. Did the inventor forget to register or hoped that his friends would do it for him? We will no longer know the answer to this question.
When the lights of the port city faded in the distance, Diesel and his fellow travelers went to a restaurant. He was in a good mood, joked a lot, told them about his wife and three children. Then the conversation turned to his invention, but Grace and Luckmann were more interested in politics. International relations were becoming more and more tense, many no longer doubted that a big and bloody war was coming. Touching upon this topic in the conversation, the interlocutors discussed the activities of Lord Admiralty Winston Churchill, who was going to modernize the British fleet.
At about ten in the evening Rudolf Diesel took his leave and went to his cabin. Having met the steward, he ordered to wake him up at 6:15 am. He hung a pocket watch on the wall next to the pillow so that he could know the time at any time. Nobody knows what happened next. In the morning the steward knocked on the cabin door for a long time to no avail, fulfilling the passenger's request to wake him up at quarter past six. Then he opened the cabin with a spare key, but there was no one in it.
Unwrinkled bed and pajamas on it said that Diesel did not go to bed. When the inventor's hat and cloak were found on deck, an alarm was raised on the Dresden. The sailors searched all the nooks and crannies of the ship, but the missing passenger was never found. The questioning of the night watch gave nothing, and no one saw any passengers on deck. Later, during the investigation into the disappearance of Rudolf Diesel, Georg Grace and Alfred Lückmann were questioned. They spoke in detail about the conversation with the inventor and noted his good mood that evening.
Accident or Suicide?
The disappearance of Rudolf Diesel, of course, became a worldwide sensation for a while. According to the very first version, Diesel died in an accident. A certain doctor allegedly told the press that the inventor was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and had already suffered a number of heart attacks. According to this version, he felt unwell and decided to go out on deck to breathe in the fresh sea air. He was leaning his chest against the deck rail, and then he had a heart attack. Diesel lost his balance and fell overboard.
This version did not last long. The inventor's attending physician categorically stated that his patient did not suffer from heart disease, and the captain of the Dresden recalled the height of the deck railing (more than a meter), which completely excluded such an accident. It was immediately assumed that the disappeared passenger was drunk. But everyone who knew Diesel categorically rejected it. According to them, he was a staunch teetotaler.
Then the journalists put forward a version of suicide. Due to the fact that Diesel was threatened with bankruptcy and complete ruin, he committed suicide. Allegedly, Krupp, who financed his research, demanded that he pay the bills. However, this version was not confirmed either. Krupp, who received a monopoly on the use of Diesel's invention in Germany, had no claims against him. Well, the financial difficulties of the inventor were not so serious as to part with life because of them.
True, those who insisted on this version said that the cause of the suicide could be in something else. However, all the behavior of the venerable German indicated that he was not going to part with his life. In the evening, he was in a great mood, he asked the steward to wake him up, indicating the exact time, Diesel took out his pajamas and hung a clock on the wall of the cabin, obviously preparing for bed. In addition, he clearly loved his wife and his children, therefore, most likely, he would have left a farewell note, but there was none.
A victim of the special services?
Initially, for some reason, it did not occur to anyone that Rudolf Diesel could have simply been killed. Perhaps someone deliberately slipped the versions of journalists away from the main reason for the disappearance of the famous inventor. When all these versions turned out to be untenable, the smartest heads wondered: why did Diesel actually go to England? Is it only for the opening of the plant? It was then that the version appeared that the inventor was going to sell his patent to the British, and therefore he was killed.
Even Winston Churchill noted in his memoirs that this version is the most plausible. Recall that it was during this period that Churchill was going to modernize the British fleet. He could well have invited a German inventor to England. The night on the ship was the most suitable time for the liquidation, and the cloak and hat were specially left on the deck for a version of suicide to appear. When the First World War began, the Diesel case was forgotten. However, at the end of the war, during interrogation, one of the German prisoners of war admitted that, on instructions from German intelligence, it was he who threw the inventor into the sea in order to prevent him from negotiating with Britain. It is known that the day after Diesel's disappearance, Belgian fishermen found the corpse of a decently dressed man in the sea. They dragged his body aboard the boat, but then a storm began. Consideringthat the sea does not want to give them the drowned man, superstitious fishermen threw him back into the water, having previously removed the rings from his fingers. The inventor's son said that these rings belonged to his father …