July 10, 2025 • 44 mins
Today, we're exploring the remarkable, yet ultimately tragic, life of Rudolf Diesel, the man whose name became synonymous with a revolutionary engine that powered a new era of industry and transportation.
Diesel's story begins in Paris in 1858, a young German engineer with an insatiable curiosity and a drive to improve upon the inefficiencies of the steam engines dominating his era. He was a visionary, dreaming of an engine so efficient it could run on a variety of fuels, even vegetable oil, empowering small businesses and artisans. We'll explore his early influences, his rigorous education under the likes of Carl von Linde, and the arduous 13-year journey to bring his compression-ignition engine to life.
And succeed he did! By the turn of the 20th century, Rudolf Diesel was a millionaire, his engine adopted across industries, powering everything from pipelines to electric plants, trucks, and especially, marine vessels. We'll trace the incredible impact of the diesel engine on the Second Industrial Revolution, how it enabled larger ships, faster transport, and truly transformed global commerce. But with great success often comes great scrutiny, and Diesel's later years were plagued by health issues, financial woes from bad investments, and growing pressures from powerful interests.
This is where his story takes a dark, inexplicable turn. On September 29, 1913, Rudolf Diesel boarded the steamship Dresden from Antwerp to London, seemingly on his way to a groundbreaking meeting about installing his engines on British submarines. He retired to his cabin that evening, instructing to be woken at 6 AM. But when his colleagues checked on him, the cabin was empty, his bed untouched, and his nightshirt neatly laid out. Ten days later, a body, identified by personal items as Diesel's, was recovered from the North Sea.
Was it suicide, a desperate act by a man facing financial ruin and declining health? Or was something far more sinister at play? We'll examine the various theories that immediately emerged: whispers of industrial espionage, fears that he was about to sell his patents to rival nations on the eve of World War I, or even assassination by the powerful oil and coal magnates whose industries stood to be disrupted by his engine's versatility. Join us as we piece together the fragments of evidence, the lingering questions, and the enduring mystery surrounding the vanishing act of Rudolf Diesel, the man who engineered the future, only to disappear without a trace.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
Hey, Alex, how youdoing? Man, hey, Kelly, how's it
going? Man, it's going great.
Very excited to be hererecording another episode of
dirt nap city, the podcast aboutinteresting dead people and oh
man, I've got one for you today.
I've got one that that that isright in line with what we like
to talk about, but I thinkyou're going to be a little bit
(00:27):
surprised. It's going to be alittle bit unexpected for you.
The ones we like to talk aboutare the ones who everybody's
heard the name, right? Butnobody knows much deeper than
that, not famous enough, usuallyfor a biopic,
but famous enough where 100%name recognition, right? Yeah,
(00:48):
yeah, or at least 99% you knowmost, most people are gonna know
who this person is, and and thatkind of leads into a good first
clue, and that as as our longterm listeners know, Alex does
not know who we're talking abouttoday, and I am going to give
him some clues to see if he canguess you know who it is. You
the listener, because you youobviously clicked on the link.
(01:10):
But I'm going to start off bytelling you that this person has
huge name recognition. The nameitself is kind of synonymous
with power.
The name itself, but it isn't.
The name has almost become athing unto itself and not
necessarily about the person.
It's not. JD, power, is it?
(01:33):
That's a good guess. That's agood guess. No, this. This guy
was born March 18, 1858, inParis, France. And he died,
September 29 1913, and this is abig clue. He died in the English
Channel, or so they say, Hmm,any thoughts on that?
(01:58):
So died in some sort of anaccident, some sort of a
mysterious circumstances, sure,sure. Yeah, it was only 55 he
was German by birth, Bavarian,actually, but lived most of his
childhood in France and England.
Didn't, didn't move back toBavaria till he was older. Kind
(02:21):
of tripped up on the whole. Nameis synonymous with power, okay?
He Yeah, when you, when you hearhis name, you almost think of
his name as a, not a propernoun, but just as a normal noun.
He is. When you say power, doyou mean literal power? Literal
(02:45):
power. So volt, yeah, you're onthe right track. You're on the
right track.
I'll give you another hint.
There's another person with thesame last name is contemporary
today, who is got a shaved headand is known for being both fast
and furious. Diesel, yes, yes.
(03:09):
Rudolph diesel. RudolphChristian Carl, diesel. How much
do you know about him? Nothing.
You're right. That's right inour wheelhouse. That's a name
that you don't think of as aname associated with power. I
don't know about the mysteriouscircumstance of his death, so
I'm interested in hearing aboutthat.
(03:30):
Here's good here's the thingabout Rudolph, diesel is or
about his invention, the dieselengine. It actually should
always be capitalized, becausethe diesel engine is a proper
noun, a proper name. And so whenyou, when you say diesel with a
lowercase d, you're actuallydoing a disservice to Rudolph.
(03:50):
Put some respect on his name.
You really should. You reallyshould. Now his first name is
Rudolph. As I said, before yougot any other famous rudolphs
You can think of over the years,well, you've got, besides the
reindeer, you've gotValentino. Rudolph. Valentino,
Italian actor, yep, Giuliani.
Giuliani,American, America's mayor for
America's mayor for a minute.
(04:15):
Yep, yep, any others you canthink of?
How about Rudolph Isley, anAmerican singer, I don't, oh, I
didn't know that his name wasRudolph. Rudolph, Rudolph
Shanker, you know who that is?
No, he was the founding member,one of the founding members of
the scorpions, guitarist andfounding member. Rudolph
(04:38):
Shanker, yeah, rock. You like ahurricane, okay? And then
Rudolph Hess. Rudolph Hess was aNazi, a German. He was he worked
for Hitler back in the day, butyou're right. Rudolph, the Red
Nosed Reindeer, is probably themost famous, followed by those
others. Rudolph diesel was born.
(05:00):
And, like I said in Paris, toElise and Theodore diesel. Now,
Theodore, then, that's the wayit was pronounced in the audio
book. Not Theodore spelledTheodore, but pronounced
Theodore was a bookbinder fromAugsburg Bavaria. So here's
another weird connection. Whenmy dad was in the Air Force and
we and he was stationed inGermany. We actually lived in
(05:22):
Augsburg. Oh, nice, yeah.
He grew up kind of poor. Thediesels weren't very wealthy. I
guess book binding was not ahuge thing back then, and
Theodore was very strict, sostrict, in fact, that he once
chained Rudolph to a desk forthe entire day.
(05:43):
Wow, that is strict. Yep.
Chained him there, and thefamily left for the day and came
back and he was still chained tothe desk. He also made Rudolph
cruel. He made Rudolph wear asign that said thief, after
after Rudolph had borrowed atool from his dad's shop without
permission. He made him wear itto school like he made him. He
made him make the sign that saidthief, and then he made him wear
it to school. I saw somebody onetime on the freeway with a
(06:07):
sandwich board that said thief,and I think it was like a court
ordered thing that the the judgehad made them stand on the side
of the road. Wow. The sign thatsaid thief, that's
some judges are into shame. Someparents are into shame. We call
that diesel justice. There yougo. Well, despite his father's
(06:30):
discipline,his his father was loving. He
cared about him. You know, theyhad a they had a he had a
brother and a sister,and his mother was a little more
soft, and she was into art, andshe was into music. And so
Rudolph had this very naturalability for science and
technology and engineering andmath and all these things that
(06:53):
he was naturally good at. Butbecause his parents raised him
in such a way that he wasintroduced to some arts and some
visual arts and music. He kindof had both sides of the brain.
He had a creative side as wellas a mathematical and scientific
side. So kind of that's how hewas brought up, and it turned
him into a bit of a socialtheorist. He became interested
(07:16):
in intellectual pursuits, aswell as engineering pursuits,
which was unusual for a Germankid at the time.
So growing up when he was 12, heuntil the time he was 12, they
lived in Paris. But then theFranco Prussian war came along,
(07:37):
and this would have been in thelate 1800s I guess, you know, or
1870s or so. And at that time,because his family was of from
Bavaria or Bavarian descent,living in in France was not a
good option. And so theyactually had to
be. They were what is it calledwhen you're kicked out of a
(07:59):
country, exiled, exiled. Thankyou. They were exiled from
France. He already was fluent inFrench, but then they moved to
London and he became fluent inEnglish, so he learned French
and English. Now he's a he's aGerman descent kid. He actually
really preferred France toLondon, or Paris to London. He
felt Paris was a much prettiercity, and his family had been
(08:23):
sort of better off when theywere living in Paris, when they
were exiled to go to live inLondon, they were poor. And, you
know, they really became poor,and they started to see things
like England at the time was theentire city of London, unless
you were very wealthy, was verydirty, a lot of coal. England
didn't havethe coal was the main fuel
(08:44):
source in England, and so therewas soot all over everything.
There was a lotion dick in thedickens episode that we talked
about 100% yes, yeah. And thisall had an impact on him. But so
he learned, he learned Englishwhile living in London, he
already knew French, and thenwhen he was 14, he had an
opportunity to go study with hismom's
(09:11):
sister and brother in law, andtheir last name was barnacle
now, can you say he was raisedby barnacles? What do you
immediately think of when youthink of barnacles, yeah? Like
the nautical, the stuff thatgrows on the side of a boat,
right? Well, yeah, I just, Iautomatically think of SpongeBob
(09:34):
SquarePants, perfect. Oh, sure,sure, sure. Barnacles.
The barnacles were stationed orlived in Augsburg, Germany,
where his family was from, andhe actually went there. And
guess what? He learned German.
So now he speaks fluent French,fluent English and fluent,
fluent German. He got acceptedinto the technical Hochschule,
(09:54):
or high school in the.
The city of Augsburg, and hisparents wanted him to come home
when he was 16, so he moved. Hemoved over to Augsburg with the
barnacles at 14. His parentswanted him to be done with
school and come back and work inLondon when he was 16, but the
(10:17):
barnacles kind of kept him thereand made the case for him to go
to a higher education because hewas very gifted, and so he ended
up staying. He got a scholarshipto go to a technical school in
Augsburg, and he learnedthermodynamics and
refrigeration, which at the timethere weren't really any
(10:38):
refrigerators. So he waslearning how to make ice and how
to keep things cold and thingslike that, which was an unusual
thing at the time, had you. Imean, if you think about it, we
kind of take chilling andcooling of our food for granted,
but at this time, back then,they were just starting to
understand how refrigerationworked. And sure, sure, yeah,
(10:59):
losing using thermodynamics andheat transfer and that kind of
stuff, exactly, exactly. Soafter, after he graduated, he
married in 1883 he married awoman named Marta. And again,
it's spelled Martha, butpronounced Marta, Flash, F, L,
A, S, C, H, E, and he joined anex professor that he had in
(11:22):
school named Karl von Lind. Carlvon Lind had his own company,
making refrigerants and studyingrefrigerants and stuff like
that. So he was able to get ajob with Carl von Lin studying
refrigerants. And during thattime, between 1883 and 1890
after he married Marta. He hadthree children. He had Rudolph
(11:43):
Jr, who was his oldest son. Hehad a daughter named Hedy, and
he had a younger son namedEugen. And what's interesting is
a lot of the book I read wasfrom a family biography that
Eugen wrote, or autobiographythat Eugen wrote later in life.
So some of this stuff wasdirectly from the newspapers,
(12:04):
you know, big stories and stufflike that. But Eugen was a kind
of a natural journalist, andkept a documentation and diary
of the entire family'sexperience. And so a lot of this
came from him. I like the nameEugen diesel. Eugen diesel,
yeah, it's a pretty cool name.
You know what the prevailingtype of motor was, right? I
mean, we talked about this whenwe talked about Henry Ford, or
(12:26):
do you mean, what year are wetalking about here? Late 1800s
1890 so it was steam, right?
Steam, steam engine. Yep,everything was steam, and steam
was extremely inefficient,supposedly, like less than 5% of
(12:46):
the potential power from thefuel actually made it actually
became power with steam. Steam,it just gave off a lot of heat.
It gave off a lot of smoke. Itgave off a lot of soot. It was,
he had to have boiling water,basically, right. So if
anything, anything, yeah, couldburn you. It's, it's not and
(13:06):
heavy too, yes, yes. Very hardto, very hard to be efficient
with steam. So, but that's kindof what interested our boy,
Rudolph diesel. He started toafter he had been working with,
working for this refrigerationcompany of Carl von Linde for a
while, he started to study moreand more dynamics, and he came
(13:32):
up with this idea, this conceptof an engine that would run on
something besides steam. And itwas this whole idea of an
internal combustion engine. So asteam engine, like you said,
it's it's actually just boilingwater and causing something to
spin, right? Whereas internalcombustion has a whole process
of strokes, you know, the thepart where it explodes and the
(13:54):
part where it expels, and thepart where it actually creates
the movement. But before we getinto any of that,
I didn't know this, but I'mreally glad to know it now. Do
you know the difference betweenan engine and a motor?
Isn't an engine where somethingis well known that would be a
(14:15):
we kind of use theminterchangeably, right? Most
people use those termsinterchangeably, but they
actually mean two differentthings. Yeah, does an engine
mean that something has to bemoving moving forward as a
result? No, an engine is amachine that converts chemical
energy from fuel into mechanicalenergy. So that's what we're
(14:36):
talking about with combustiblefuel like gasoline, diesel,
natural gas. Those are all socar engines, jet engines, diesel
generators, those are allexamples. Doesn't matter if they
move or not. Converts, convertswhat chemical energy, so some
sort that could even be steam.
(14:58):
No, because, well.
Yeah, I guess so, I guess so.
Okay, yes, and it's called asteam engine. So you're right.
A motor is actually where itconverts electrical energy into
mechanical energy. So carmotors, ceiling fans, industrial
motors and machinery, you know,a little, a little motor that
(15:19):
you might have in a drill, youknow, if you had an electric
drill, those, those are notengines, those are motors. So
anything that's even like,Hmm, so you couldn't have
anything that's that's a handcrank, couldn't be a motor
either, if it's, if it'sif it burns fuel, it's an
engine. If it runs onelectricity. It's a motor.
(15:42):
That's the difference a handcrank, I guess would be a set of
gears. It's more of a gearingthing, right?
Okay, so anyway, he understoodthis, and he started to
experiment. Now, one otherinteresting thing, you know how
combustible gasoline is, right?
If you took a match while youwere filling up your car at the
(16:03):
gas station and you held it tooclose to the gas tank, the fumes
can catch fire, and that couldbe a huge problem, right, right,
right, yeah, with diesel fuel.
And diesel fuel is a very broadtopic of fuel, a very broad set
of things. It's not just onething, but diesel fuel is not
nearly as combustible asgasoline. As a matter of fact,
(16:25):
it said that you can throw amatch onto an open container of
diesel fuel and it won't, itwon't Ignite, really. The reason
is, for diesel to work, it's gotto be under high pressure and
high temperature. So it requiresheat and pressure to ignite,
whereas all they all normalgasoline needs is heat. It
(16:49):
doesn't need that pressure. Sothese, these original motors,
I'm sorry, these originalengines, not motors that diesel
was developing, were built towithstand 1000s of pounds of
pressure internally, becausethey had to have that for it to
actually start to start to work.
(17:11):
There was a guy named NicholasOtto, Otto, and he was the first
one to develop the four strokeengine. And I said it poorly
just a minute ago, but a fourstroke engine basically has,
like an intake, a combustion,the power stroke cycle, and
then, like the X, the X exhaust,right? So it's four, four
(17:33):
complete strokes that happen thediesel motor. Diesel engine was
based on the four stroke idea,that there were four different
strokes that would happen. Andafter 20 years,
he finally kind of got one thatworked, and he started, he
(17:53):
started usingthis, and it's the diesel engine
used compression. It was muchmore efficient, like instead of
being, say, 5% efficient as asteam engine might be, it was
maybe 15 or 20% efficient, butthat was a huge leap forward. It
still gave off a lot of heat. Itstill gave off a lot of waste,
(18:15):
but not nearly as much as yougot with something like coal
when they were so at this point,the fuel is the same, but the
engine is different. No, thefuel is actually different. So
what's what's different at thispoint too. So, so it's two
things. He's making a dieselfuel and a diesel engine. So the
original idea that that Rudolphdiesel had for diesel engines
(18:38):
was that they could run onvegetable oil, they could run on
peanut oil, they could run onit. The number of things that
you can run a diesel engine onis way, way more. It doesn't
have to be a petroleum basedthing. It could be, it could be
some sort of organic oil thatwas made peanut oil. I don't
(18:59):
know if you know this, butWillie Nelson's bus, for a while
was actually set to run onkitchen grease. Yeah, I remember
in Austin, there used to bequite a few people that would
make cars that run on that kindof stuff, and you just go to the
back of a restaurant, yeah,they're closing, and you'd get
their grease, and then the carwould smell like whatever kind
(19:21):
of restaurant, like Chineserestaurant, french fries, or
whatever they were they werecooking.
You remember how that was athing, like maybe 20 years ago?
These were all these well, andit still is. These were all
these were all diesel engines.
These were all based on the sameengine that Rudolph diesel
invented. So those people,they're doing that, obviously,
(19:45):
because they're not having topay for gas, but they could
also, if they went to a gasstation, they would use the
petroleum diesel right and anddiesel, Rudolph diesel had this
idea.
Know that it was going to be agreat technology for many
countries and many people,because the type of fuel you
(20:08):
could use in it was so versatilethat you didn't have to have
petroleum, you didn't have tohave Standard Oil, right? You'd
have to have a refinery. Youcould just, you know, we'll get
your food, make your food andthen fill up your tank, right?
It's very renewable. When hefirst designed the prototype, it
was 1893and then in 1918 97 is when he
(20:29):
actually had the the results,enough to kind of show it off to
people and to say, hey, thisactually works. So when he when
he had that successfuldemonstration in 1897
he was coming up with severaldifferent names for it. At first
he wanted to call it the Deltaengine. And delta is the symbol
(20:50):
for change, right? It's theGreek or whatever.
And then, but he didn't decideon that. Then he was going to
call it the Excelsior engine.
Excelsior, I guess was just aword that was used back then to
mean high quality. Yeah, kind ofa cool name, the Excalibur
engine. He kind of liked thatbecause he thought it was sort
of magical, and it would besomething that would be magical.
(21:12):
But his wife Marta finally said,just call it the diesel engine.
And he was like, Well, okay, sothat's what he called it.
So he demonstrated it to a biggroup of scientists and
engineers and business people.
And after that, people wentcrazy for it, because they
realized the potential of it.
(21:32):
And he decided he was going toset it up so that each country
would have one primarymanufacturer and distributor of
diesel engines, and he was goingto license that to them. So he
went around to differentcountries, you know, all around
the world, and started tonegotiate these terms.
In 1897he sold the rights to the diesel
(21:53):
engine in the United States toAdolphus bush.
Now you know who Adolphusbushes, right? The beer magnet,
the beer Yes, in St Louis, andhe and Adolphus Bush became good
friends.
The problem was initially thatthe early days,
(22:17):
the early days of it, it didn'twork without an expert, so it
would have problems. And unlessthere was somebody there who had
either was diesel himself or hadtrained under Rudolph diesel, it
was very hard for people to keepthese motors running initially,
because, you mean, they wouldjust like conk out, they would
conk out. I mean, remember,they're under high degrees of
(22:39):
pressure and heat. And so a lotof times they would explode.
There were lots of explosions ofearly diesel engines.
It was not easy to keep onerunning. But again, his idea was
that you'd be able to run it ongrease, animal fat, vegetable
oil,seed oil. And also another way
that they could run it wasactually a derivative of coal
(23:00):
called coal tar. So England wasvery, very rich in coal. And
England actually was interestedin diesel engines running on
coal tar, because they couldrefine the coal, make this coal
tar, and it would run cleanerthan it would run than than it
would then things would just runon normal coal. It was cleaner
than burning coal, cleaner thanburning coal, but not cleaner
(23:22):
than a regular refinedpetroleum, right? No, no, but,
but, but this was the earlydays, right? They were still
experimenting with this stuff.
You imagine the pollution if weall were running our cars on
coal, coal tar, coal tar. Butstill, you know, that's probably
even more like, it sounds bad,doesn't it? It does so he, you
(23:48):
know, he did have this sort oftrauma from growing up when he
was living in England and seeingall this soot and everything.
And he really did like the ideawhen you ran, aside from the
smell that you mentioned earlierabout, you know, smelling like a
Chinese restaurant, when you ranit on grease, kitchen grease, or
animal fat or recycled grease,it actually ran fairly cleanly,
(24:08):
and that was something that hereally appreciated and liked.
But during all this time, thisis the, you know, the the 1910s
at this point, 19, 1908 19 1019,12. World War One was brewing,
and there were a few factors atwork that were kind of working
(24:31):
against Rudolph diesel numberone, Kaiser Wilhelm didn't like
how friendly diesel was with theAmericans. He didn't like how
friendly he was with the French,because he had been raised
there, he didn't like howfriendly he was with the
English,and so he was kind of targeted
bythe early by Kaiser Wilhelm the
second, who was the Kaiser of orthe head of Germany at the time,
(24:56):
and then the other person.
That he actually kind of gotcrosswise with you want to guess
who that was. It's an American,Henry Ford. No, no. Henry Ford
actually offered him a job. Itwas John D Rockefeller,
because Rockefeller at thistime. The problem with
(25:18):
Rockefeller is people were nolonger using the oil burning
lamps, and so Rockefeller wastrying to figure out how he was
going to sell all his oil well.
Cars were just becoming a thing,you know, motorized
transportation and so, but thediesel, because it could run on
other things besides petroleum,was threatening to Rockefeller.
So Rockefeller did not likeRudolph diesel. The other
(25:41):
challenge that became duringthis time was Rudolph diesel
realized that even though hethought that this engine could
be used for powering generatorsfor towns or powering generators
for small business,it really started getting picked
up by a lot of the countries ina militaristic way. And one of
(26:01):
the first use cases for thediesel engine was on ships. So
steam ships would have these bigplumes of smoke, and they would
have these big smoke stacks, andthey would have guys that had to
sit in the bottom and or standin the bottom and shovel coal
into the into the burner to keepthe ship going,
(26:23):
diesel engines could actuallyrun a ship much more efficiently
than than coal could. But thenthat was when,
and also, without having theobvious telltale sign of smoke,
there was a lot less smokecoming off the top of it. So if
you had a warship and it wasusing steam for power, well,
(26:45):
guess what? People could see youcoming from many miles away
because of all the smoke comingoff of this, off of the coal
that you were burning. But ifyou were using a diesel engine,
you could sneak up on people alot more effectively, hmm, than
you could. Well, the Germanstook that and started putting it
into submarines. And, you know,they called them U boats, right
at the time. Yeah, Germanycalled them the U boats. Those
(27:09):
submarines initially were using.
They were experimenting withsubmarines, and they were very,
very inefficient. They were veryineffective. But as soon as they
started putting diesel motorsinto submarines. That's when the
U boats became a big threatduring during World War One. One
thing thatwas also coming into its own at
the time was Winston Churchillwas running a secret development
(27:33):
of a new type of armoredvehicle, and they were calling
these armored vehicles, landships. They were big, big
machines, but they tried to keepthe development of these land
ships secret from everyone, andthey were bringing in steel and
reinforcing these big armoredvehicles. And when asked about
(27:54):
why they were using so muchsteel, Winston Churchill's cover
was that they were buildingwater tanks, and that that's how
armored vehicles got to be knownas tanks.
Oh, wow, that's interesting.
Yeah, they were using, they wereusing the term water tank as a
(28:18):
as a cover, and the term tankjust kind of stuck. So all of
these different uses of dieselengines started to come to be.
Obviously. This made Rudolphdiesel very wealthy. He started
to make some money. He moved hisfamily to Munich. They built a
(28:38):
ginormous house and his childrenhad a very good upbringing. His
wife, Marta, had a very goodsocial life, and things were
okay with him. You know, some ofthe people from dirt nap city
that he ran around with and wasfriends with. One was Ferdinand
von Zeppelin. Oh, nice. AndZeppelin actually used diesel
(29:02):
later in some of the laterZeppelin models. He met Thomas
Edison one time, and he andThomas Edison actually didn't
get along very well becauseThomas Edison was so arrogant.
Apparently he was verydiscussive.
He was a rival of John DRockefeller. Rockefeller didn't
like him. Teddy Roosevelt wrotethat Rudolph diesel was one of
(29:24):
the most brilliant inventors ofhis time.
And then, as I said earlier,Henry Ford actually wanted to
hire him to develop dieselengines for Ford vehicles, but
he he declined on that. All ofthis is going on. Rudolph
started tohave some money, but then he
also started to experience someproblems with his money. He got
(29:46):
a little over leveraged, and hewas trying to raise more money.
He was trying to kind ofconsolidate these different
licenses he had given out forthe.
The building and manufacturingand distribution of diesel
engines. And while this was allgoing on, he was starting to get
(30:08):
a little over leveraged. Andthere there was some some
financial problems brewing forhim. Even though he was making a
lot of money, he was alsospending and losing a lot of
money on some bad investments.
Well, on September 29 1913 heboarded a steamship. Kind of
ironic. It was a steamer namedSS Dresden in Antwerp, England,
and he was on his way to ameeting that he was supposed to
(30:33):
have. He had dinner on the ship.
He retired to his cabin around10am or 10pm
and then he was never seenagain.
He disappeared off the SSDresden in the English Channel.
Now there was a lot ofconjecture about what happened,
(30:54):
but a few other things that hadgone on, number one right before
this trip that he took on the SSDresden, he had given his wife a
gift before he left, and in ithe had stuffed 20,000 German
marks in cash he had with hisson, Rudolph Jr. He had actually
shown Rudolph where some of hisimportant things around the
(31:20):
house were hidden. Had gonearound and made a point to show
his son where they were hidden.
And he had also shredded a bunchof papers before, before he went
on this trip. So after hedisappeared, there was a lot of
conjecture about what happened?
And there were kind of threemain,
(31:44):
three main theories. One wasthat he fell overboard
accidentally and couldn't befound. Two was that he committed
suicide by jumping overboard,and three was that he was
murdered by somebody like,you know, Wilhelm Kaiser,
Wilhelm the second or, or maybe,maybe John D Rockefeller had
(32:08):
some, some of his goons come outand kill him. But nobody could
really say for sure. And thenthere were some other weird
things that happened when hedisappeared at the back of this
ship, the SS Dresden, there wasa place where, apparently he had
gone into the water, but he hada top hat and his coat were
(32:32):
folded neatly on the edge ofthat
now, why would somebody, whywould somebody fold their coat
and place their hat neatly onthe edge before they fell into
the water. Do you know theanswer to that? No, no, I don't.
I don't still, still got yourwhat's your what's your
implication there? What are youimplying when you say, Why would
(32:54):
somebody fold that? Well, Imean, if you were gonna kill
yourself by jumping off a ship,would you, would you take off
your top hat and fold your foldyour jacket neatly and then jump
in?
I mightokay. He might well, okay. So
again, three, three theories,accident, he was sleepwalking,
(33:16):
or he had had too much to drinkat dinner, and he fell over the
rail. It was a, it was a fourand a half foot rail, by the
way, so they don't think hefell, you know, even somebody
sleepwalking, that would be kindof you'd have to intentionally
climb up onto it.
Was it suicide? Because his hewas in financial ruin. There was
(33:38):
a lot ofpeople didn't want to talk about
that. You know, it was kind of aforbidden thing to talk about
suicide. But at the time,he was also poised. He had, he
had made some money, he had lostsome money, and now, because of
how popular the diesel enginewas and some military contracts
he had coming up, he was aboutto make a lot more. So suicide.
(34:01):
Seems like he was really closeto getting going from
millionaire to billionaire, kindof situation, you know,
was it murder? Was it the Germangovernment, because they were
mad that he was licensing thistechnology to their enemies? Was
it John D Rockefeller and youknow, his goons that he
(34:23):
sometimes hired to enforcethings. Well, here's what
happened. Is about,let's see how many days later
was it? It was like two weekslater, a Dutch Pilot Boat found
a corpse of a man floating,floating in the water. It had
been there for two weeks and waspretty badly decomposed. They
(34:43):
pulled it close to the ship andactually had a guy go out in a
little dinghy and remove anypersonal effects, well, on this
body, supposedly, was.
A pill, a little pill container,some eyeglasses, some
(35:08):
pocket knife, and an ID card.
And this stuff was brought in,and supposedly there was bad
weather, and so they didn't pullthe body, and the body was badly
composed, so they just pushedthe body away and let it just
stay in the water rather thanbringing it in.
This stuff was sent to Eugen andand to his mother, and it was
(35:32):
identified, and it was, yeah,that's that belongs to my
father, Rudolph diesel. You knowthis pill, pill,
pill case and eyeglasses caseand pocket knife and all that
stuff that was pulled from him.
But What's strange about that isthey didn't pull the body in,
and supposedly in maritime lawand tradition, no matter how
(35:54):
badly decomposed a body was,they should have pulled him in,
and the fact that they didn'tmakes everybody think that he
faked his death, that this wasall planned, that he didn't go
out on the Dresden. He leftsomewhere and had gone back to
to England or back to Germany,and that this group of Dutch
(36:18):
people on this pilot boat justwent along with this story. And,
you know, someone was giventhese artifacts to say that he
had died and that he actuallyimmigrated to Canada so that he
could get away from all theseproblems. But unless he had
access to like you'd had to havesomebody in on it, yes, feed
him. Feed him his money.
Otherwise, it's the same issueas why he wouldn't have killed
(36:41):
himself, like if he's on the topof the world.
Well, if you fake your own deathand don't have access to that
money, then it's other than thedying part. It's no different
than faking your own death.
Well, the other the other partthat made it even more
suspicious was abouttwo months later, Marta
(37:04):
disappeared mysteriously, hiswife. Oh,
so you think she joined him inCanada? She joined him in
Canada. Yeah, that's a theory,but nobody ever proved it. It's
never, he was never. So this isstill an unsolved mystery. It
is, it is, yeah,is Eugen still alive? Eugen
(37:26):
is not, I would say he but Idon't think he died until, like,
the 60s or 70s, Eugen,but in his, in his biography of
the family, he didn't ever saythat, you know, that his, his
death was faked, and maybe Eugenwasn't in on it, you know, maybe
it was just him and Marta that'scold blooded. Yeah, yeah. But
big mystery as to as to whathappened to Rudolf Diesel. I
(37:49):
mean,if it, the biggest reason that
they think of this faked deaththeory is because it was really
out of character for this DutchPilot Boat not to bring the body
on board, despite bad weather,despite decomposition. That's
something that they should havejust done, you know, and so
(38:12):
well, of course, there was noDNA. That wasn't a thing back
then. So other than theconvention that you said about
how that's what you're supposedto do. I could see if this thing
is nasty and it's decomposed, Icould see not bringing it. Well,
yeah, you can, but you're not asailor, right? As a sailor, you
know, they wanted, a lot of thembelieved that the soul couldn't
(38:33):
rest until it was brought backto the family, kind of thing.
So, yeah, I mean, it could havebeen any of those things,
accident, suicide, murder orfaked his own death, but,
yeah, and now today, if youthink about it,
you know, we tend to think ofwhen we think of transportation,
(38:54):
we tend to think of personalvehicles, right, cars and such
and such. And now there'selectric cars and there aren't
many diesel cars. Diesel carsnever really caught on, but
every, almost every tractortrailer truck that's out there
is diesel, almost almost everyship, almost every bus, almost
every construction equipmentruns on diesel.
(39:17):
Their airplanes that run ondiesel. It's, yeah, the
commercial cars that were dieselwere all Volkswagens, I think,
yeah, and German, that wouldmake sense, because it was kind
of founded from, from a Germancompany. I knew somebody that
had a Volkswagen Golf that wasdiesel, yeah, yeah, that's the
that's the green, that's thegreen handle right at the gas
(39:40):
station. Yeah, it is, it is, andit won't fit in the it won't fit
in the normal gasgas dispenser. It won't fit in
your normal gas tank. Thank God,and that's good, because if it
did, it would wreck your rightengine, right, right. Totally
different type of fuel, much,much thicker, heavier fuel that
doesn't burn like gasoline. You.
(40:00):
Yeah, there is a show on TVseries on Discovery Channel
called the diesel brothers. Andthis was a pretty cool quote
that I watched an episode justas I was doing this. These guys
that go in and build customtrucks, you know, they'll take a
old pickup truck and put adiesel engine in it and and make
(40:21):
it nice.
But they said a gas poweredengine will hit the wall faster,
but a diesel engine will drag itfarther once you hit it.
Hmm. Diesel is all about powerversus versus speed.
And then going back to theoriginal clue I gave out there,
Vin Diesel, not related.
(40:44):
Is that his real last name? Hisreal name is Mark since
Sinclair. Oh, yeah,Vin Diesel. Vin Diesel was the
stage name. So, yeah. So, yeah.
I just thought, wow, there is aname that we hear all the time,
a word that we hear all thetime, and we don't even think
about a person, but we all knowthe word. We all know what it's
(41:04):
about. And so I thought I had todig a little deeper, and
probably won't make a comeback,just in the we're going the
other direction right now,hopefully with with cleaner
things. So that probably won'tit's probably as already been,
as popular as he'll be. Yeah,true, although, although, we're
probably still a ways off fromdiesel, from replacing things
(41:29):
like tractors and busses, youknow. I mean Well, busses now
are a lot of natural guestsIsland G run the bus fleets.
True, true. Okay, well, Rudolphdiesel, he was quite, quite an
inventor, lived quite aninteresting life, quite a
brilliant man, but sort of anunsung hero. So hopefully, next
(41:52):
time you hop on a bus or you'recruising on a on a big ship, a
freighter or a cruise ship, youjust take a moment to appreciate
Mr. Rudolph diesel. Is there,wait a minute, if he faked his
own death? Is there a chancethat he's not dead?
I mean, he was, he was born in1858 so he'd be genetically
(42:17):
pretty amazing if he what, ifyou faked your own death and
then live to be 150 and youcouldn't tell anybody about it,
you'd be a vampire. Yeah?
Well, let's assume he can go todirt nap city. Then I think he's
there. He's there TINKERING AWAYWITH with all the other
inventors.
(42:42):
Yeah.
Vin Diesel's cruising in a shinycar. He's got muscles bigger
than a protein bar, but let metell you something that'll make
you wheez. He's got no relationto the guy with the diesel
grills.
No Rudolph diesel in his familytree. Finn's not an inventor of
(43:03):
machinery. He's fast andfurious, but let's be clear,
Rudolph's engines won't run onmovie
game. Finn's all about actionand saving the day. Rudolph
built engines in a wholedifferent way. One's pumping
fist, the other pump fuel.
Finn's not an engineer. He'sjust super cool.
No, Rudolph diesel in his familytree. Ben's not an inventor of
(43:27):
machinery. He's fast andfurious. But let's be clear,
Rudolph's engines won't run onmovie gear,
so don't mix your diesels.
They're not the same onesHollywood fame. One's an
engineering name. Ben's gottorpor, not the mechanical kind
Pluto's got pistons runningthrough his mind. You
(44:11):
no Rudolph diesel in his familytree. Ben's not an inventor of
machine eatery. He's fast andfurious. But let's be clear,
Rudolph's engines won't run onto begin you.
Hey, Alex, how youdoing? Man, hey, Kelly, how's it
going? Man, it's going great.
Very excited to be hererecording another episode of
dirt nap city, the podcast aboutinteresting dead people and oh
man, I've got one for you today.
I've got one that that that isright in line with what we like
to talk about, but I thinkyou're going to be a little bit
(00:27):
surprised. It's going to be alittle bit unexpected for you.
The ones we like to talk aboutare the ones who everybody's
heard the name, right? Butnobody knows much deeper than
that, not famous enough, usuallyfor a biopic,
but famous enough where 100%name recognition, right? Yeah,
(00:48):
yeah, or at least 99% you knowmost, most people are gonna know
who this person is, and and thatkind of leads into a good first
clue, and that as as our longterm listeners know, Alex does
not know who we're talking abouttoday, and I am going to give
him some clues to see if he canguess you know who it is. You
the listener, because you youobviously clicked on the link.
(01:10):
But I'm going to start off bytelling you that this person has
huge name recognition. The nameitself is kind of synonymous
with power.
The name itself, but it isn't.
The name has almost become athing unto itself and not
necessarily about the person.
It's not. JD, power, is it?
(01:33):
That's a good guess. That's agood guess. No, this. This guy
was born March 18, 1858, inParis, France. And he died,
September 29 1913, and this is abig clue. He died in the English
Channel, or so they say, Hmm,any thoughts on that?
(01:58):
So died in some sort of anaccident, some sort of a
mysterious circumstances, sure,sure. Yeah, it was only 55 he
was German by birth, Bavarian,actually, but lived most of his
childhood in France and England.
Didn't, didn't move back toBavaria till he was older. Kind
(02:21):
of tripped up on the whole. Nameis synonymous with power, okay?
He Yeah, when you, when you hearhis name, you almost think of
his name as a, not a propernoun, but just as a normal noun.
He is. When you say power, doyou mean literal power? Literal
(02:45):
power. So volt, yeah, you're onthe right track. You're on the
right track.
I'll give you another hint.
There's another person with thesame last name is contemporary
today, who is got a shaved headand is known for being both fast
and furious. Diesel, yes, yes.
(03:09):
Rudolph diesel. RudolphChristian Carl, diesel. How much
do you know about him? Nothing.
You're right. That's right inour wheelhouse. That's a name
that you don't think of as aname associated with power. I
don't know about the mysteriouscircumstance of his death, so
I'm interested in hearing aboutthat.
(03:30):
Here's good here's the thingabout Rudolph, diesel is or
about his invention, the dieselengine. It actually should
always be capitalized, becausethe diesel engine is a proper
noun, a proper name. And so whenyou, when you say diesel with a
lowercase d, you're actuallydoing a disservice to Rudolph.
(03:50):
Put some respect on his name.
You really should. You reallyshould. Now his first name is
Rudolph. As I said, before yougot any other famous rudolphs
You can think of over the years,well, you've got, besides the
reindeer, you've gotValentino. Rudolph. Valentino,
Italian actor, yep, Giuliani.
Giuliani,American, America's mayor for
America's mayor for a minute.
(04:15):
Yep, yep, any others you canthink of?
How about Rudolph Isley, anAmerican singer, I don't, oh, I
didn't know that his name wasRudolph. Rudolph, Rudolph
Shanker, you know who that is?
No, he was the founding member,one of the founding members of
the scorpions, guitarist andfounding member. Rudolph
(04:38):
Shanker, yeah, rock. You like ahurricane, okay? And then
Rudolph Hess. Rudolph Hess was aNazi, a German. He was he worked
for Hitler back in the day, butyou're right. Rudolph, the Red
Nosed Reindeer, is probably themost famous, followed by those
others. Rudolph diesel was born.
(05:00):
And, like I said in Paris, toElise and Theodore diesel. Now,
Theodore, then, that's the wayit was pronounced in the audio
book. Not Theodore spelledTheodore, but pronounced
Theodore was a bookbinder fromAugsburg Bavaria. So here's
another weird connection. Whenmy dad was in the Air Force and
we and he was stationed inGermany. We actually lived in
(05:22):
Augsburg. Oh, nice, yeah.
He grew up kind of poor. Thediesels weren't very wealthy. I
guess book binding was not ahuge thing back then, and
Theodore was very strict, sostrict, in fact, that he once
chained Rudolph to a desk forthe entire day.
(05:43):
Wow, that is strict. Yep.
Chained him there, and thefamily left for the day and came
back and he was still chained tothe desk. He also made Rudolph
cruel. He made Rudolph wear asign that said thief, after
after Rudolph had borrowed atool from his dad's shop without
permission. He made him wear itto school like he made him. He
made him make the sign that saidthief, and then he made him wear
it to school. I saw somebody onetime on the freeway with a
(06:07):
sandwich board that said thief,and I think it was like a court
ordered thing that the the judgehad made them stand on the side
of the road. Wow. The sign thatsaid thief, that's
some judges are into shame. Someparents are into shame. We call
that diesel justice. There yougo. Well, despite his father's
(06:30):
discipline,his his father was loving. He
cared about him. You know, theyhad a they had a he had a
brother and a sister,and his mother was a little more
soft, and she was into art, andshe was into music. And so
Rudolph had this very naturalability for science and
technology and engineering andmath and all these things that
(06:53):
he was naturally good at. Butbecause his parents raised him
in such a way that he wasintroduced to some arts and some
visual arts and music. He kindof had both sides of the brain.
He had a creative side as wellas a mathematical and scientific
side. So kind of that's how hewas brought up, and it turned
him into a bit of a socialtheorist. He became interested
(07:16):
in intellectual pursuits, aswell as engineering pursuits,
which was unusual for a Germankid at the time.
So growing up when he was 12, heuntil the time he was 12, they
lived in Paris. But then theFranco Prussian war came along,
(07:37):
and this would have been in thelate 1800s I guess, you know, or
1870s or so. And at that time,because his family was of from
Bavaria or Bavarian descent,living in in France was not a
good option. And so theyactually had to
be. They were what is it calledwhen you're kicked out of a
(07:59):
country, exiled, exiled. Thankyou. They were exiled from
France. He already was fluent inFrench, but then they moved to
London and he became fluent inEnglish, so he learned French
and English. Now he's a he's aGerman descent kid. He actually
really preferred France toLondon, or Paris to London. He
felt Paris was a much prettiercity, and his family had been
(08:23):
sort of better off when theywere living in Paris, when they
were exiled to go to live inLondon, they were poor. And, you
know, they really became poor,and they started to see things
like England at the time was theentire city of London, unless
you were very wealthy, was verydirty, a lot of coal. England
didn't havethe coal was the main fuel
(08:44):
source in England, and so therewas soot all over everything.
There was a lotion dick in thedickens episode that we talked
about 100% yes, yeah. And thisall had an impact on him. But so
he learned, he learned Englishwhile living in London, he
already knew French, and thenwhen he was 14, he had an
opportunity to go study with hismom's
(09:11):
sister and brother in law, andtheir last name was barnacle
now, can you say he was raisedby barnacles? What do you
immediately think of when youthink of barnacles, yeah? Like
the nautical, the stuff thatgrows on the side of a boat,
right? Well, yeah, I just, Iautomatically think of SpongeBob
(09:34):
SquarePants, perfect. Oh, sure,sure, sure. Barnacles.
The barnacles were stationed orlived in Augsburg, Germany,
where his family was from, andhe actually went there. And
guess what? He learned German.
So now he speaks fluent French,fluent English and fluent,
fluent German. He got acceptedinto the technical Hochschule,
(09:54):
or high school in the.
The city of Augsburg, and hisparents wanted him to come home
when he was 16, so he moved. Hemoved over to Augsburg with the
barnacles at 14. His parentswanted him to be done with
school and come back and work inLondon when he was 16, but the
(10:17):
barnacles kind of kept him thereand made the case for him to go
to a higher education because hewas very gifted, and so he ended
up staying. He got a scholarshipto go to a technical school in
Augsburg, and he learnedthermodynamics and
refrigeration, which at the timethere weren't really any
(10:38):
refrigerators. So he waslearning how to make ice and how
to keep things cold and thingslike that, which was an unusual
thing at the time, had you. Imean, if you think about it, we
kind of take chilling andcooling of our food for granted,
but at this time, back then,they were just starting to
understand how refrigerationworked. And sure, sure, yeah,
(10:59):
losing using thermodynamics andheat transfer and that kind of
stuff, exactly, exactly. Soafter, after he graduated, he
married in 1883 he married awoman named Marta. And again,
it's spelled Martha, butpronounced Marta, Flash, F, L,
A, S, C, H, E, and he joined anex professor that he had in
(11:22):
school named Karl von Lind. Carlvon Lind had his own company,
making refrigerants and studyingrefrigerants and stuff like
that. So he was able to get ajob with Carl von Lin studying
refrigerants. And during thattime, between 1883 and 1890
after he married Marta. He hadthree children. He had Rudolph
(11:43):
Jr, who was his oldest son. Hehad a daughter named Hedy, and
he had a younger son namedEugen. And what's interesting is
a lot of the book I read wasfrom a family biography that
Eugen wrote, or autobiographythat Eugen wrote later in life.
So some of this stuff wasdirectly from the newspapers,
(12:04):
you know, big stories and stufflike that. But Eugen was a kind
of a natural journalist, andkept a documentation and diary
of the entire family'sexperience. And so a lot of this
came from him. I like the nameEugen diesel. Eugen diesel,
yeah, it's a pretty cool name.
You know what the prevailingtype of motor was, right? I
mean, we talked about this whenwe talked about Henry Ford, or
(12:26):
do you mean, what year are wetalking about here? Late 1800s
1890 so it was steam, right?
Steam, steam engine. Yep,everything was steam, and steam
was extremely inefficient,supposedly, like less than 5% of
(12:46):
the potential power from thefuel actually made it actually
became power with steam. Steam,it just gave off a lot of heat.
It gave off a lot of smoke. Itgave off a lot of soot. It was,
he had to have boiling water,basically, right. So if
anything, anything, yeah, couldburn you. It's, it's not and
(13:06):
heavy too, yes, yes. Very hardto, very hard to be efficient
with steam. So, but that's kindof what interested our boy,
Rudolph diesel. He started toafter he had been working with,
working for this refrigerationcompany of Carl von Linde for a
while, he started to study moreand more dynamics, and he came
(13:32):
up with this idea, this conceptof an engine that would run on
something besides steam. And itwas this whole idea of an
internal combustion engine. So asteam engine, like you said,
it's it's actually just boilingwater and causing something to
spin, right? Whereas internalcombustion has a whole process
of strokes, you know, the thepart where it explodes and the
(13:54):
part where it expels, and thepart where it actually creates
the movement. But before we getinto any of that,
I didn't know this, but I'mreally glad to know it now. Do
you know the difference betweenan engine and a motor?
Isn't an engine where somethingis well known that would be a
(14:15):
we kind of use theminterchangeably, right? Most
people use those termsinterchangeably, but they
actually mean two differentthings. Yeah, does an engine
mean that something has to bemoving moving forward as a
result? No, an engine is amachine that converts chemical
energy from fuel into mechanicalenergy. So that's what we're
(14:36):
talking about with combustiblefuel like gasoline, diesel,
natural gas. Those are all socar engines, jet engines, diesel
generators, those are allexamples. Doesn't matter if they
move or not. Converts, convertswhat chemical energy, so some
sort that could even be steam.
(14:58):
No, because, well.
Yeah, I guess so, I guess so.
Okay, yes, and it's called asteam engine. So you're right.
A motor is actually where itconverts electrical energy into
mechanical energy. So carmotors, ceiling fans, industrial
motors and machinery, you know,a little, a little motor that
(15:19):
you might have in a drill, youknow, if you had an electric
drill, those, those are notengines, those are motors. So
anything that's even like,Hmm, so you couldn't have
anything that's that's a handcrank, couldn't be a motor
either, if it's, if it'sif it burns fuel, it's an
engine. If it runs onelectricity. It's a motor.
(15:42):
That's the difference a handcrank, I guess would be a set of
gears. It's more of a gearingthing, right?
Okay, so anyway, he understoodthis, and he started to
experiment. Now, one otherinteresting thing, you know how
combustible gasoline is, right?
If you took a match while youwere filling up your car at the
(16:03):
gas station and you held it tooclose to the gas tank, the fumes
can catch fire, and that couldbe a huge problem, right, right,
right, yeah, with diesel fuel.
And diesel fuel is a very broadtopic of fuel, a very broad set
of things. It's not just onething, but diesel fuel is not
nearly as combustible asgasoline. As a matter of fact,
(16:25):
it said that you can throw amatch onto an open container of
diesel fuel and it won't, itwon't Ignite, really. The reason
is, for diesel to work, it's gotto be under high pressure and
high temperature. So it requiresheat and pressure to ignite,
whereas all they all normalgasoline needs is heat. It
(16:49):
doesn't need that pressure. Sothese, these original motors,
I'm sorry, these originalengines, not motors that diesel
was developing, were built towithstand 1000s of pounds of
pressure internally, becausethey had to have that for it to
actually start to start to work.
(17:11):
There was a guy named NicholasOtto, Otto, and he was the first
one to develop the four strokeengine. And I said it poorly
just a minute ago, but a fourstroke engine basically has,
like an intake, a combustion,the power stroke cycle, and
then, like the X, the X exhaust,right? So it's four, four
(17:33):
complete strokes that happen thediesel motor. Diesel engine was
based on the four stroke idea,that there were four different
strokes that would happen. Andafter 20 years,
he finally kind of got one thatworked, and he started, he
(17:53):
started usingthis, and it's the diesel engine
used compression. It was muchmore efficient, like instead of
being, say, 5% efficient as asteam engine might be, it was
maybe 15 or 20% efficient, butthat was a huge leap forward. It
still gave off a lot of heat. Itstill gave off a lot of waste,
(18:15):
but not nearly as much as yougot with something like coal
when they were so at this point,the fuel is the same, but the
engine is different. No, thefuel is actually different. So
what's what's different at thispoint too. So, so it's two
things. He's making a dieselfuel and a diesel engine. So the
original idea that that Rudolphdiesel had for diesel engines
(18:38):
was that they could run onvegetable oil, they could run on
peanut oil, they could run onit. The number of things that
you can run a diesel engine onis way, way more. It doesn't
have to be a petroleum basedthing. It could be, it could be
some sort of organic oil thatwas made peanut oil. I don't
(18:59):
know if you know this, butWillie Nelson's bus, for a while
was actually set to run onkitchen grease. Yeah, I remember
in Austin, there used to bequite a few people that would
make cars that run on that kindof stuff, and you just go to the
back of a restaurant, yeah,they're closing, and you'd get
their grease, and then the carwould smell like whatever kind
(19:21):
of restaurant, like Chineserestaurant, french fries, or
whatever they were they werecooking.
You remember how that was athing, like maybe 20 years ago?
These were all these well, andit still is. These were all
these were all diesel engines.
These were all based on the sameengine that Rudolph diesel
invented. So those people,they're doing that, obviously,
(19:45):
because they're not having topay for gas, but they could
also, if they went to a gasstation, they would use the
petroleum diesel right and anddiesel, Rudolph diesel had this
idea.
Know that it was going to be agreat technology for many
countries and many people,because the type of fuel you
(20:08):
could use in it was so versatilethat you didn't have to have
petroleum, you didn't have tohave Standard Oil, right? You'd
have to have a refinery. Youcould just, you know, we'll get
your food, make your food andthen fill up your tank, right?
It's very renewable. When hefirst designed the prototype, it
was 1893and then in 1918 97 is when he
(20:29):
actually had the the results,enough to kind of show it off to
people and to say, hey, thisactually works. So when he when
he had that successfuldemonstration in 1897
he was coming up with severaldifferent names for it. At first
he wanted to call it the Deltaengine. And delta is the symbol
(20:50):
for change, right? It's theGreek or whatever.
And then, but he didn't decideon that. Then he was going to
call it the Excelsior engine.
Excelsior, I guess was just aword that was used back then to
mean high quality. Yeah, kind ofa cool name, the Excalibur
engine. He kind of liked thatbecause he thought it was sort
of magical, and it would besomething that would be magical.
(21:12):
But his wife Marta finally said,just call it the diesel engine.
And he was like, Well, okay, sothat's what he called it.
So he demonstrated it to a biggroup of scientists and
engineers and business people.
And after that, people wentcrazy for it, because they
realized the potential of it.
(21:32):
And he decided he was going toset it up so that each country
would have one primarymanufacturer and distributor of
diesel engines, and he was goingto license that to them. So he
went around to differentcountries, you know, all around
the world, and started tonegotiate these terms.
In 1897he sold the rights to the diesel
(21:53):
engine in the United States toAdolphus bush.
Now you know who Adolphusbushes, right? The beer magnet,
the beer Yes, in St Louis, andhe and Adolphus Bush became good
friends.
The problem was initially thatthe early days,
(22:17):
the early days of it, it didn'twork without an expert, so it
would have problems. And unlessthere was somebody there who had
either was diesel himself or hadtrained under Rudolph diesel, it
was very hard for people to keepthese motors running initially,
because, you mean, they wouldjust like conk out, they would
conk out. I mean, remember,they're under high degrees of
(22:39):
pressure and heat. And so a lotof times they would explode.
There were lots of explosions ofearly diesel engines.
It was not easy to keep onerunning. But again, his idea was
that you'd be able to run it ongrease, animal fat, vegetable
oil,seed oil. And also another way
that they could run it wasactually a derivative of coal
(23:00):
called coal tar. So England wasvery, very rich in coal. And
England actually was interestedin diesel engines running on
coal tar, because they couldrefine the coal, make this coal
tar, and it would run cleanerthan it would run than than it
would then things would just runon normal coal. It was cleaner
than burning coal, cleaner thanburning coal, but not cleaner
(23:22):
than a regular refinedpetroleum, right? No, no, but,
but, but this was the earlydays, right? They were still
experimenting with this stuff.
You imagine the pollution if weall were running our cars on
coal, coal tar, coal tar. Butstill, you know, that's probably
even more like, it sounds bad,doesn't it? It does so he, you
(23:48):
know, he did have this sort oftrauma from growing up when he
was living in England and seeingall this soot and everything.
And he really did like the ideawhen you ran, aside from the
smell that you mentioned earlierabout, you know, smelling like a
Chinese restaurant, when you ranit on grease, kitchen grease, or
animal fat or recycled grease,it actually ran fairly cleanly,
(24:08):
and that was something that hereally appreciated and liked.
But during all this time, thisis the, you know, the the 1910s
at this point, 19, 1908 19 1019,12. World War One was brewing,
and there were a few factors atwork that were kind of working
(24:31):
against Rudolph diesel numberone, Kaiser Wilhelm didn't like
how friendly diesel was with theAmericans. He didn't like how
friendly he was with the French,because he had been raised
there, he didn't like howfriendly he was with the
English,and so he was kind of targeted
bythe early by Kaiser Wilhelm the
second, who was the Kaiser of orthe head of Germany at the time,
(24:56):
and then the other person.
That he actually kind of gotcrosswise with you want to guess
who that was. It's an American,Henry Ford. No, no. Henry Ford
actually offered him a job. Itwas John D Rockefeller,
because Rockefeller at thistime. The problem with
(25:18):
Rockefeller is people were nolonger using the oil burning
lamps, and so Rockefeller wastrying to figure out how he was
going to sell all his oil well.
Cars were just becoming a thing,you know, motorized
transportation and so, but thediesel, because it could run on
other things besides petroleum,was threatening to Rockefeller.
So Rockefeller did not likeRudolph diesel. The other
(25:41):
challenge that became duringthis time was Rudolph diesel
realized that even though hethought that this engine could
be used for powering generatorsfor towns or powering generators
for small business,it really started getting picked
up by a lot of the countries ina militaristic way. And one of
(26:01):
the first use cases for thediesel engine was on ships. So
steam ships would have these bigplumes of smoke, and they would
have these big smoke stacks, andthey would have guys that had to
sit in the bottom and or standin the bottom and shovel coal
into the into the burner to keepthe ship going,
(26:23):
diesel engines could actuallyrun a ship much more efficiently
than than coal could. But thenthat was when,
and also, without having theobvious telltale sign of smoke,
there was a lot less smokecoming off the top of it. So if
you had a warship and it wasusing steam for power, well,
(26:45):
guess what? People could see youcoming from many miles away
because of all the smoke comingoff of this, off of the coal
that you were burning. But ifyou were using a diesel engine,
you could sneak up on people alot more effectively, hmm, than
you could. Well, the Germanstook that and started putting it
into submarines. And, you know,they called them U boats, right
at the time. Yeah, Germanycalled them the U boats. Those
(27:09):
submarines initially were using.
They were experimenting withsubmarines, and they were very,
very inefficient. They were veryineffective. But as soon as they
started putting diesel motorsinto submarines. That's when the
U boats became a big threatduring during World War One. One
thing thatwas also coming into its own at
the time was Winston Churchillwas running a secret development
(27:33):
of a new type of armoredvehicle, and they were calling
these armored vehicles, landships. They were big, big
machines, but they tried to keepthe development of these land
ships secret from everyone, andthey were bringing in steel and
reinforcing these big armoredvehicles. And when asked about
(27:54):
why they were using so muchsteel, Winston Churchill's cover
was that they were buildingwater tanks, and that that's how
armored vehicles got to be knownas tanks.
Oh, wow, that's interesting.
Yeah, they were using, they wereusing the term water tank as a
(28:18):
as a cover, and the term tankjust kind of stuck. So all of
these different uses of dieselengines started to come to be.
Obviously. This made Rudolphdiesel very wealthy. He started
to make some money. He moved hisfamily to Munich. They built a
(28:38):
ginormous house and his childrenhad a very good upbringing. His
wife, Marta, had a very goodsocial life, and things were
okay with him. You know, some ofthe people from dirt nap city
that he ran around with and wasfriends with. One was Ferdinand
von Zeppelin. Oh, nice. AndZeppelin actually used diesel
(29:02):
later in some of the laterZeppelin models. He met Thomas
Edison one time, and he andThomas Edison actually didn't
get along very well becauseThomas Edison was so arrogant.
Apparently he was verydiscussive.
He was a rival of John DRockefeller. Rockefeller didn't
like him. Teddy Roosevelt wrotethat Rudolph diesel was one of
(29:24):
the most brilliant inventors ofhis time.
And then, as I said earlier,Henry Ford actually wanted to
hire him to develop dieselengines for Ford vehicles, but
he he declined on that. All ofthis is going on. Rudolph
started tohave some money, but then he
also started to experience someproblems with his money. He got
(29:46):
a little over leveraged, and hewas trying to raise more money.
He was trying to kind ofconsolidate these different
licenses he had given out forthe.
The building and manufacturingand distribution of diesel
engines. And while this was allgoing on, he was starting to get
(30:08):
a little over leveraged. Andthere there was some some
financial problems brewing forhim. Even though he was making a
lot of money, he was alsospending and losing a lot of
money on some bad investments.
Well, on September 29 1913 heboarded a steamship. Kind of
ironic. It was a steamer namedSS Dresden in Antwerp, England,
and he was on his way to ameeting that he was supposed to
(30:33):
have. He had dinner on the ship.
He retired to his cabin around10am or 10pm
and then he was never seenagain.
He disappeared off the SSDresden in the English Channel.
Now there was a lot ofconjecture about what happened,
(30:54):
but a few other things that hadgone on, number one right before
this trip that he took on the SSDresden, he had given his wife a
gift before he left, and in ithe had stuffed 20,000 German
marks in cash he had with hisson, Rudolph Jr. He had actually
shown Rudolph where some of hisimportant things around the
(31:20):
house were hidden. Had gonearound and made a point to show
his son where they were hidden.
And he had also shredded a bunchof papers before, before he went
on this trip. So after hedisappeared, there was a lot of
conjecture about what happened?
And there were kind of threemain,
(31:44):
three main theories. One wasthat he fell overboard
accidentally and couldn't befound. Two was that he committed
suicide by jumping overboard,and three was that he was
murdered by somebody like,you know, Wilhelm Kaiser,
Wilhelm the second or, or maybe,maybe John D Rockefeller had
(32:08):
some, some of his goons come outand kill him. But nobody could
really say for sure. And thenthere were some other weird
things that happened when hedisappeared at the back of this
ship, the SS Dresden, there wasa place where, apparently he had
gone into the water, but he hada top hat and his coat were
(32:32):
folded neatly on the edge ofthat
now, why would somebody, whywould somebody fold their coat
and place their hat neatly onthe edge before they fell into
the water. Do you know theanswer to that? No, no, I don't.
I don't still, still got yourwhat's your what's your
implication there? What are youimplying when you say, Why would
(32:54):
somebody fold that? Well, Imean, if you were gonna kill
yourself by jumping off a ship,would you, would you take off
your top hat and fold your foldyour jacket neatly and then jump
in?
I mightokay. He might well, okay. So
again, three, three theories,accident, he was sleepwalking,
(33:16):
or he had had too much to drinkat dinner, and he fell over the
rail. It was a, it was a fourand a half foot rail, by the
way, so they don't think hefell, you know, even somebody
sleepwalking, that would be kindof you'd have to intentionally
climb up onto it.
Was it suicide? Because his hewas in financial ruin. There was
(33:38):
a lot ofpeople didn't want to talk about
that. You know, it was kind of aforbidden thing to talk about
suicide. But at the time,he was also poised. He had, he
had made some money, he had lostsome money, and now, because of
how popular the diesel enginewas and some military contracts
he had coming up, he was aboutto make a lot more. So suicide.
(34:01):
Seems like he was really closeto getting going from
millionaire to billionaire, kindof situation, you know,
was it murder? Was it the Germangovernment, because they were
mad that he was licensing thistechnology to their enemies? Was
it John D Rockefeller and youknow, his goons that he
(34:23):
sometimes hired to enforcethings. Well, here's what
happened. Is about,let's see how many days later
was it? It was like two weekslater, a Dutch Pilot Boat found
a corpse of a man floating,floating in the water. It had
been there for two weeks and waspretty badly decomposed. They
(34:43):
pulled it close to the ship andactually had a guy go out in a
little dinghy and remove anypersonal effects, well, on this
body, supposedly, was.
A pill, a little pill container,some eyeglasses, some
(35:08):
pocket knife, and an ID card.
And this stuff was brought in,and supposedly there was bad
weather, and so they didn't pullthe body, and the body was badly
composed, so they just pushedthe body away and let it just
stay in the water rather thanbringing it in.
This stuff was sent to Eugen andand to his mother, and it was
(35:32):
identified, and it was, yeah,that's that belongs to my
father, Rudolph diesel. You knowthis pill, pill,
pill case and eyeglasses caseand pocket knife and all that
stuff that was pulled from him.
But What's strange about that isthey didn't pull the body in,
and supposedly in maritime lawand tradition, no matter how
(35:54):
badly decomposed a body was,they should have pulled him in,
and the fact that they didn'tmakes everybody think that he
faked his death, that this wasall planned, that he didn't go
out on the Dresden. He leftsomewhere and had gone back to
to England or back to Germany,and that this group of Dutch
(36:18):
people on this pilot boat justwent along with this story. And,
you know, someone was giventhese artifacts to say that he
had died and that he actuallyimmigrated to Canada so that he
could get away from all theseproblems. But unless he had
access to like you'd had to havesomebody in on it, yes, feed
him. Feed him his money.
Otherwise, it's the same issueas why he wouldn't have killed
(36:41):
himself, like if he's on the topof the world.
Well, if you fake your own deathand don't have access to that
money, then it's other than thedying part. It's no different
than faking your own death.
Well, the other the other partthat made it even more
suspicious was abouttwo months later, Marta
(37:04):
disappeared mysteriously, hiswife. Oh,
so you think she joined him inCanada? She joined him in
Canada. Yeah, that's a theory,but nobody ever proved it. It's
never, he was never. So this isstill an unsolved mystery. It
is, it is, yeah,is Eugen still alive? Eugen
(37:26):
is not, I would say he but Idon't think he died until, like,
the 60s or 70s, Eugen,but in his, in his biography of
the family, he didn't ever saythat, you know, that his, his
death was faked, and maybe Eugenwasn't in on it, you know, maybe
it was just him and Marta that'scold blooded. Yeah, yeah. But
big mystery as to as to whathappened to Rudolf Diesel. I
(37:49):
mean,if it, the biggest reason that
they think of this faked deaththeory is because it was really
out of character for this DutchPilot Boat not to bring the body
on board, despite bad weather,despite decomposition. That's
something that they should havejust done, you know, and so
(38:12):
well, of course, there was noDNA. That wasn't a thing back
then. So other than theconvention that you said about
how that's what you're supposedto do. I could see if this thing
is nasty and it's decomposed, Icould see not bringing it. Well,
yeah, you can, but you're not asailor, right? As a sailor, you
know, they wanted, a lot of thembelieved that the soul couldn't
(38:33):
rest until it was brought backto the family, kind of thing.
So, yeah, I mean, it could havebeen any of those things,
accident, suicide, murder orfaked his own death, but,
yeah, and now today, if youthink about it,
you know, we tend to think ofwhen we think of transportation,
(38:54):
we tend to think of personalvehicles, right, cars and such
and such. And now there'selectric cars and there aren't
many diesel cars. Diesel carsnever really caught on, but
every, almost every tractortrailer truck that's out there
is diesel, almost almost everyship, almost every bus, almost
every construction equipmentruns on diesel.
(39:17):
Their airplanes that run ondiesel. It's, yeah, the
commercial cars that were dieselwere all Volkswagens, I think,
yeah, and German, that wouldmake sense, because it was kind
of founded from, from a Germancompany. I knew somebody that
had a Volkswagen Golf that wasdiesel, yeah, yeah, that's the
that's the green, that's thegreen handle right at the gas
(39:40):
station. Yeah, it is, it is, andit won't fit in the it won't fit
in the normal gasgas dispenser. It won't fit in
your normal gas tank. Thank God,and that's good, because if it
did, it would wreck your rightengine, right, right. Totally
different type of fuel, much,much thicker, heavier fuel that
doesn't burn like gasoline. You.
(40:00):
Yeah, there is a show on TVseries on Discovery Channel
called the diesel brothers. Andthis was a pretty cool quote
that I watched an episode justas I was doing this. These guys
that go in and build customtrucks, you know, they'll take a
old pickup truck and put adiesel engine in it and and make
(40:21):
it nice.
But they said a gas poweredengine will hit the wall faster,
but a diesel engine will drag itfarther once you hit it.
Hmm. Diesel is all about powerversus versus speed.
And then going back to theoriginal clue I gave out there,
Vin Diesel, not related.
(40:44):
Is that his real last name? Hisreal name is Mark since
Sinclair. Oh, yeah,Vin Diesel. Vin Diesel was the
stage name. So, yeah. So, yeah.
I just thought, wow, there is aname that we hear all the time,
a word that we hear all thetime, and we don't even think
about a person, but we all knowthe word. We all know what it's
(41:04):
about. And so I thought I had todig a little deeper, and
probably won't make a comeback,just in the we're going the
other direction right now,hopefully with with cleaner
things. So that probably won'tit's probably as already been,
as popular as he'll be. Yeah,true, although, although, we're
probably still a ways off fromdiesel, from replacing things
(41:29):
like tractors and busses, youknow. I mean Well, busses now
are a lot of natural guestsIsland G run the bus fleets.
True, true. Okay, well, Rudolphdiesel, he was quite, quite an
inventor, lived quite aninteresting life, quite a
brilliant man, but sort of anunsung hero. So hopefully, next
(41:52):
time you hop on a bus or you'recruising on a on a big ship, a
freighter or a cruise ship, youjust take a moment to appreciate
Mr. Rudolph diesel. Is there,wait a minute, if he faked his
own death? Is there a chancethat he's not dead?
I mean, he was, he was born in1858 so he'd be genetically
(42:17):
pretty amazing if he what, ifyou faked your own death and
then live to be 150 and youcouldn't tell anybody about it,
you'd be a vampire. Yeah?
Well, let's assume he can go todirt nap city. Then I think he's
there. He's there TINKERING AWAYWITH with all the other
inventors.
(42:42):
Yeah.
Vin Diesel's cruising in a shinycar. He's got muscles bigger
than a protein bar, but let metell you something that'll make
you wheez. He's got no relationto the guy with the diesel
grills.
No Rudolph diesel in his familytree. Finn's not an inventor of
(43:03):
machinery. He's fast andfurious, but let's be clear,
Rudolph's engines won't run onmovie
game. Finn's all about actionand saving the day. Rudolph
built engines in a wholedifferent way. One's pumping
fist, the other pump fuel.
Finn's not an engineer. He'sjust super cool.
No, Rudolph diesel in his familytree. Ben's not an inventor of
(43:27):
machinery. He's fast andfurious. But let's be clear,
Rudolph's engines won't run onmovie gear,
so don't mix your diesels.
They're not the same onesHollywood fame. One's an
engineering name. Ben's gottorpor, not the mechanical kind
Pluto's got pistons runningthrough his mind. You
(44:11):
no Rudolph diesel in his familytree. Ben's not an inventor of
machine eatery. He's fast andfurious. But let's be clear,
Rudolph's engines won't run onto begin you.
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