WEBVTT - The Story of Rudolf Diesel 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:07.200 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.680 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:18.160 Chuck and Benz here sitting in for Jerry, and this 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:19.159 is stuff you should know? 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:23.239 What you know? 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:24.200 I kind of pick up the. 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:30.800 Ball the baton. We are doing an episode today on 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:34.839 Rudolph Diesel, invention of our inventor of the diesel engine. 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:38.919 And this was prepared for us by Anna Green, one 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:42.680 of our writers, and edited a great job, very exhaustive. Look, 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:46.000 but this was a listener suggestion and I went back 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:47.559 to look at who it was, and it turns out 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:50.200 there were three emails over the past like a couple 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:54.880 of years to investigate Rudolph Diesel. Scott Simpson, I don't 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:57.400 think my friend Scott Simpson, who's also a comedian but 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:03.680 who knows okay, Christian Coiner and then very mysteriously Leo 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:08.679 and Jenny Oh No, last name yeah, Leo and Jenny. 0:01:08.800 --> 0:01:10.520 The last name isn't in Jenny. 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:13.360 Right, No, the middle initial is in in the last 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:14.080 name is Jenny. 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:17.320 Yeah. So thanks for these suggestions, because this was I 0:01:17.319 --> 0:01:19.120 didn't know anything about the guy, didn't know anything about 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:21.320 the diesel engine, and now I feel good enough to 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:23.840 get a Jeopardy answer or two correct. 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:28.040 For sure, Yeah, call us ken. I had no idea 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:30.640 about this either. I didn't realize that diesel is technically 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:34.760 a proprietary eponym, or at least a proper noun. If 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:37.319 you see like that Diesel engine, the d should be 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:40.319 capitalized because it was invented. It's named after its inventor, 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:44.240 Rudolph Diesel, who was working around the turn of the 0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:47.000 last century and a little bit before, a little bit after. 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:52.120 And he was a German kid born in Paris to 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:55.880 a father who well, his father was a bit of 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:58.400 a character, as we'll see in some of the worst ways. 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:03.360 But who was He was an interesting person who made 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:07.320 his own way in the world and changed it radically. 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:11.000 The irony is he changed it in ways that were 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:14.120 the opposite of what he wanted to or how we 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:15.440 wanted to change the world. 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:20.160 Yeah, for sure. And like many inventors, his story starts 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:24.320 out as a child who was sort of obsessed with 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:29.359 figuring out how things worked. A tinkerer who would take 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:31.239 apart things. We've heard the story kind of time and 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:33.640 time again. Someone who would like disassemble things in their house, 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:37.520 put them back together. As a kid in Paris, he 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:40.760 was working for his dad a lot of the time 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:44.560 or in school, and in eighteen sixty seven came across 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:48.480 his first internal combustion engine at the Paris World's Fair 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:54.360 when he saw the auto engine, Nicholas Auto's coal gas engine, 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:55.880 like I said, at the World's Fair. 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.040 Yeah, and this was a big deal. Other people had 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:04.000 invented internal combustion engines before, but Nicholas Auto's was like 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:08.840 the culmination of it. It was like the real deal. So 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:13.440 the fact that it really struck young Rudolph Diesel, this 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:20.120 would have been oh he would have been fifteen, nineteen, No, 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:21.359 he would have been nine. 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:22.720 Yeah. 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:25.120 Imagine being a nine year old kid and seeing an 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:28.120 internal combustion engine and saying to yourself, this is what 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:29.400 I want to dedicate my life. 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:30.480 Yeah, that was the. 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:34.200 Kind of kid. Theodore Diesel was right. And again it 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:38.240 was a big deal that he saw this engine, or 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:40.200 I should say the engine itself was a big deal. 0:03:40.480 --> 0:03:43.240 But they didn't stick around Paris for much longer. That 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:46.200 was eighteen sixty seven. Within three years, the Franco Prussian 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:48.480 War broke out and the Diesel family said we need 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:51.640 to get out of France. Let's move to London, and 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.520 they did, and the whole family took a downward turn 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:55.040 from there. 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:58.840 Yeah, I mean, I get the idea that it was 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:01.240 just sort of moved uprooted and moved to a new 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:03.160 country and had a lot of time getting good work 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:08.320 because their family did not live well there, thankfully at 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:11.760 least for Rudolph. A few months after getting there, he 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:14.880 was twelve at the time and uncle said, come back 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:18.760 to Germany, come back to Ausburg, live with us. Your 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:22.680 uncle here, Christophe Barnacle, will help pay for your schooling. 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:26.039 He enrolled at the Royal County Trade School for three 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:29.440 years while his family stayed in London. So when he 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:32.840 graduated in eighteen sixty five, his dad said, hey, need 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:35.280 you to come back to London and get some get 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:38.960 a job and help us out, like your schooling is over. 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:42.320 Rudolph said nine, I'm gonna stay here. I want to 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:44.680 be an engineer, which means I need to keep going 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:48.640 to school. So he denied his father and enrolled at 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:54.799 the Technicia Hochschuler Munschen there in what we call Munich, Germany. 0:04:55.560 --> 0:05:00.120 He got a scholarship to go there and very the 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:03.040 word I'm looking for when something happens, it's very important 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:04.640 and auspicious. 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:08.640 No, resolute, No. 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:17.600 Not that sort of the opposite of coincidence. Uh, purposefully yeah, yeah, perpendicularly, 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:20.920 just very importantly. There, I will say, met one Carl 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:25.080 von Linda, who would be his a big person in 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:27.440 his life, his employer at one point, and a mentor 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:27.919 and friend. 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:29.640 I get what you're trying to say. I can't think 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:30.920 of the word either, kind of like. 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:35.520 Auspiciously, like auspicious as fate would have it. No, it 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:42.400 is auspicious, right, predetermination, predestination someone I know, this is 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:43.560 the kind of stuff people like. 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:46.200 I'm like, I like stuff, you should know, but there's 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:48.240 a lot that I don't like about it too. You know. 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:52.520 Where I was leading with that was from that point 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:56.640 where he met von Linda and was in school he 0:05:56.760 --> 0:06:02.520 became fascinated by another proprietary epic engine, the steam engine 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:04.680 invented by Danny Steam. 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:11.080 Right. No, he came across the Carnov cycle, Right, Wasn't 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:14.640 that another thing that really kind of struck him floated 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:15.840 his boat? 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:18.080 Yeah, besides Danny Steam's invention. 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:21.520 Yeah, well, the Carno cycle is this It is a 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:29.359 theoretical engine external combustion engine that where every bit of 0:06:29.760 --> 0:06:33.200 energy put into it produces work, so it's one hundred 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:37.920 percent efficient. It's essentially impossible, but it's theoretically possible. And 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:44.039 that combined with auto's internal combustion engine, really kind of 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:47.920 came together to give Rudolph Diesel like his his purpose 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:50.720 in life, his mission in life. And then, like you said, 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:55.720 when he fortuitously met Carl von Linz. 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:58.159 The word yeah. 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:00.400 Everything came together because now he had a mentor of Haron, 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:02.240 a guy who gave him a job right out of 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:07.360 right out of school. And when you take like the 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:11.480 fact that his family was using their luggage in London 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:14.800 as the furniture in their house, and his aunt and 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.320 uncle came a call in and said, let's just pluck 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:20.080 you out of this situation and put you on the 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:23.440 road to your destiny. And then you're going to go 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:27.360 forth and change the world. Literally, your invention is going 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:31.840 to fuel the Second Industrial Revolution and put us where 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:36.040 humans are today. You can largely thank Rudolph Diesel in 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:40.080 his invention for that. It's it's just mind boggling the 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:43.160 series of events that happened to do that, and the 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:44.600 effect that it had on the world. 0:07:45.080 --> 0:07:45.160 No. 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:49.280 Absolutely. He moved back to Paris eventually in eighteen eighty 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:52.440 and like you said, he went to work for Carl 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:55.840 von Linde. I think it said Linda and I had. 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:58.400 I just imagine him being like a seventies mom. 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:01.760 I think German. It wouldn't be lend I think it 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:04.760 would be lind like with Ah at the end. 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:11.280 Sure, but I don't know about Linda. 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:14.000 You know, like Linda's bagels. He worked for for Lynd 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:18.800 as an ice guy. He had a ice machine company, 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:21.520 and he was all kinds of things. He was an 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:24.600 apprentice for a little while. He eventually became a salesperson 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:27.440 over this decade that he worked for him. But one 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:30.280 of the other cool facts, and this is the Jeopardy question, 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:32.760 maybe one of them. Ye, it's like, what other famous 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:36.600 thing did Rudolph Diesel invent? He invented and got a 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:38.040 patent for the ice cube. 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:42.040 Yeah. Yeah. I was like when I saw that, I 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:43.640 was like, well, wait, does that mean he invented the 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:47.120 ice cube? Yes, Indeed, Rudolph Diesel, the inventor of the 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:49.080 Diesel engine, also invented the ice cube. 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:52.240 Yeah, which I guess is the means of I mean 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:54.960 maybe they just never thought of freezing ice in cubes before. 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:57.440 I guess. But think about it, Chuck, we would be 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:02.240 lacking one quarter of NWA had Theodore Diesel not come 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:04.199 along or Rudolph Diesel not come along. 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:05.360 That's a good point. 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:09.360 So he graduated like like we kind of put the 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:13.560 car in front of the horse. But he graduated and 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:16.880 went on to get that job with Linda Carl von Linda. 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:21.199 But when he did graduate from school, he had the 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:24.160 highest grades in the history of the entire school. One 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:26.120 of the reasons why he was a very serious student. 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:29.560 He was not some even though he was well taken 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:31.880 care of and funded. He was you know, when he 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:35.760 had a scholarship, he worked his tail off and took 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:39.320 his his his studies very seriously. So this kid was 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:43.559 like he was pretty put together for you know, his age, 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:44.040 for sure. 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:48.200 Yeah, absolutely, So, you know I said he worked there 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:51.199 for a decade. Within that decade, for about six or 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:55.520 seven years of it, he after inventing the ice cube, 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.640 which would help found n w A and I guess 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:01.400 prevent from just being tea. 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:05.959 Right, or hot tea sure, or even tepid ta. 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:08.880 Right, tepid t. That's that's your refer name. 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:11.800 Reallypid t. 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:15.000 Yeah, neither hot nor cold. 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:18.640 You have to say it like you're slightly annoying, tepid tea. 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:22.800 Yeah, exactly. He started working on engines again, this this 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:26.040 idea popped back into his head, this memory of the 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:28.880 Carno cycle of like, gosh, there's got to be a 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:33.240 way to make Danny Steam's engine more efficient. And for 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:36.000 about six or seven years he worked on and trying 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:40.720 to develop an ammonia powered heat engine. Ammonia was too volatile, 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:44.400 so he eventually ends up back in Berlin with his 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:46.440 By this time he had a wife, Martha and three 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:50.400 children and started working like in Earnest on the internal 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:54.520 combustion engine and I believe filed a patent in eighteen 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:55.040 ninety two. 0:10:56.559 --> 0:11:01.000 Uh yeah, I feel like we should take a break 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:03.439 and then come back and talk about like, you know, 0:11:04.120 --> 0:11:06.680 how what what? Like this guy wasn't working in a vacuum, 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:09.000 so what environment? What world he was working? And when 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:11.600 he was trying to come up with his diesel engine. 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:12.439 All right, let's do it. 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:21.160 Stop you know, stop stop stop here? Should know no 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:28.320 stop you know stop stop stop here? Shouldn't know stuff? 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:32.560 You should know as w s K. 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:44.440 You should know, so, Chuck. I found a BBC article 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:46.800 that kind of put the stakes out there pretty well 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:50.880 about what was driving in part Rudolph Diesel's obsession with 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:54.680 creating a super efficient engine. And one of the things 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:56.400 they said was that there was a ton of horses. 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:58.439 I think they said in a city of five hundred 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.640 thousand people, there were probably one hundred thousand horses, and 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:03.920 all of them were walking around, pooping and peeing everywhere, 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:08.080 all over the place. So an alternative to horse power 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:12.520 was very desirable, and we already had steam power, but 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:15.360 steam power had its own thing going on, and in 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:18.760 one way, one of the big weaknesses of steam powers 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:21.040 that it required tons and tons and tons of coal, 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:25.040 because you use coal to heat a boiler, to boil 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:28.600 water to create steam to run a piston, and then 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:31.600 the piston turns the chemical energy of the coal into 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:35.480 the mechanical work that turns something or makes something go 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:37.599 up and down or does whatever. Probably has something to 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:40.200 do with gears. I don't get it, but there was 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:43.719 already back in the eighteen sixties a book by a 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:47.720 guy named Stanley Jevin or Jivaon called The Coal Question, 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:51.080 and this guy was already warning about peak coal, essentially 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:54.560 pointing out like coal is a non renewable resource everybody, 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.560 and we are using it really really fast. This guy 0:12:57.600 --> 0:13:02.640 was already ringing the alarm about it. Rudolph Diesel was 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.200 exactly the kind of person who this whose ear was 0:13:05.240 --> 0:13:07.440 out for this kind of thing. So in addition to 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:13.079 replacing the really inefficient steam engine, in addition to replacing 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:15.600 like letting the horses go retire and be put out 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:18.560 to pasture, and then also about you know, coming up 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:21.120 with something that doesn't use coal, all of these things 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:23.760 came together to kind of give him this mission in 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:24.440 this drive. 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:29.960 Yeah. Absolutely. He went back idea wise, at least to 0:13:30.080 --> 0:13:35.200 the auto engine again an internal combustion engine, but auto's 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:37.840 engine used a spark, like you know, a spark plug 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:41.439 to ignite the fuel, and Diesel still thought, there's got 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.839 to be a better way. I don't think we need 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:47.840 that spark. I think we can use highly compressed air 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:51.080 that gets so compressed and so hot it will ignite, 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:54.760 and ended up sort of using this idea from a 0:13:56.280 --> 0:14:00.360 tinder box that he saw that was a base a 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:03.840 sparkless way to ignite tender and it was like a 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:06.599 sort of like a syringe. It was larger, it was 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:08.840 about the size of a like a bicycle pump, but 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:13.079 like a glass syringe that compressed air such that it 0:14:13.120 --> 0:14:17.319 would eventually provide that ignition. And he was like, hey, 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:19.720 if it works there, it could work in an engine. 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:21.920 Yeah. And the genius of all this is so again, 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:25.240 steam engines are powering the industrial revolution. They've done their thing, 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:29.440 They've completely changed the world. But again, they're really inefficient. 0:14:29.440 --> 0:14:33.160 I think they're about ten percent efficient. So ninety percent 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:35.360 of the energy in the coal is lost to heat 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:37.040 to the environment, only ten percent. 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:37.560 Terrible. 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:40.680 Actually, yeah, it's really really inefficient. And so one of 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:45.000 the geniuses of an internal combustion engine in the first place, 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:49.320 but also specifically Diesel's engine is it says, what if 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:52.560 we just got rid of all the stuff that led 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:57.920 up to that piston moving and just like make the 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:01.920 engine that piston. If you compress air enough, you're compressing 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:05.840 the molecules really tightly, really quickly. It causes them to 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.440 become excited, which causes them to put off heat, and 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:12.120 if you compress it enough, it produces enough heat that 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.960 it can ignite fuel in that piston. Causing the piston 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:18.280 to move up and down. And that's ultimately what you're 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:20.280 after is making that piston move up and down. So 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:22.360 he got rid of all that stuff, the piles of coal, 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:25.280 the big boiler full of steam, the steam itself, and 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:29.120 took the whole the whole process right to the piston itself. 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:31.480 And it worked really, really well. 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:35.760 It turned out, yeah, eventually, And you know, we should 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:38.080 probably talk a little bit about his big idea with this. 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:41.200 It wasn't just he had. He had other drives besides 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:45.400 making an engine that worked more efficiently. He was he 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:50.360 had this idea of helping the common person. And uh, 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:54.280 you know, while while Danny Steam's invention may have powered 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:58.120 the industrial Revolution, what what did it do for the 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:01.800 artisan in the countryside, or the craftsmen or the small 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:04.760 business person. And I think I can build an engine 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:09.120 that's small enough, that runs on cheap fuel, that doesn't 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:11.920 require much, if any maintenance if you're kind of keeping 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:14.320 up with it, or you know, repair as long as 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:18.040 you're maintaining it. Rather that it can revitalize the countryside 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:22.000 and make people in rural areas give them the same 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:25.840 sort of chance to succeed by having the power of 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:27.720 an engine at their disposal. 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:29.880 Right, Yeah, because those steam engines were so big and 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:32.040 required so much labor, they just sucked people from the 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:34.720 countryside and consolidated them in the cities. And he wanted 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:37.920 to do the opposite. And so if you have a light, portable, 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:42.280 efficient engine that people in the rural areas can use, yeah, 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:44.480 like you said, it give them put them on equal 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:47.720 footing with the industrialists of the city. But also you 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.720 mentioned cheap fuel too. One of his dreams was to 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:57.120 make his diesel engine run on vegetable oil. Essentially biodiesel 0:16:57.280 --> 0:16:59.400 is essentially what he was trying to do, and it 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.840 was a viable idea for a really long time, basically 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:05.679 the entire time he was alive. And that would have 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.760 really given people in rural areas a leg up because 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.680 they could have grown their own fuel to power the 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.600 engines that they had at their disposal to run their 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:16.200 arts and crafts fares. 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:20.159 Yeah, so he had big ideas he filed his patent, 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:22.960 he went to try and get funding, a lot of 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:28.720 skepticism obviously in the financial marketplace at the time, and 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:32.000 he got a couple of guys, Heinrich von Butz and 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:36.840 Friedrich Krup to give him some money. Von Botz, for 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:40.480 his part, was a managing director at Machine Fabric Alsberg 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:43.199 and also said, hey, you can take some of my 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:46.360 factory space to work on this stuff. So Rudolph moved 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:50.480 to Alsberg in eighteen ninety three started working on this 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:54.880 engine with that sort of tinderbox idea in mind. And 0:17:56.080 --> 0:17:57.919 the one thing he couldn't figure out. He was like, a, no, 0:17:58.040 --> 0:18:01.880 compressing air can ignite this thing, but I just don't 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:05.320 know how much pressure I'm gonna need. And for a 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:08.119 little while it got a little dangerous in that machine shop. 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:11.680 Yeah there, I guess. There was no way to work 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:13.560 it out on paper. First. He had to figure it 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:15.639 out like in real. 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:17.440 Life by compressing air. 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:21.720 Yeah, it's essentially adding some combustible fluid to or fuel 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:25.920 to it. So he did that. His first working prototype 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:29.080 he demonstrated in the lab. I don't even know if 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:30.800 it was demonstration. I think they just tried it the 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:37.040 first time and the it compressed air so much I guess, 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:39.919 and produced so much heat that the engine blew up 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:42.280 and like you said, blue throughout the lab like pieces 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:46.280 of the engine went flying. But when like you can 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:48.520 just imagine in the movie, like they rise up from 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:50.919 behind like some big crate and everybody's hair standing on 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:55.520 and there's smoke coming off of there. He's like it worked. 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:59.280 In that he proved that if you compressed air you 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:02.760 could create he ate enough heat to ignite something. You 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:05.560 didn't need a spark, you didn't need coal or a boiler. 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:08.399 You like, his engine could work and it had just 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:09.000 been proven. 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:13.600 Yeah, for sure. The second one went much better. It 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.080 did not explode. The third one was the big sort 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:21.080 of moment when the bell rang, it ran on kerosene. 0:19:21.960 --> 0:19:24.560 He was thirty nine years old, which is pretty incredible 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:27.480 to think about, and felt comfortable enough to do a 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:32.560 public test on February seventeenth, eighteen ninety seven, in front 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:35.679 of an audience there at the Machine Fabric Factory for 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:39.480 the employees and engineers. A few other firms were there, 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:41.840 and it was a really big, big success. And he 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:45.280 in that he achieved not only a working engine, but 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:49.520 it was had a basically invisible and almost odorless exhaust 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:52.880 and reached an efficiency of twenty six point two percent 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:56.959 compared with Danny Steams measly ten percent. 0:19:57.080 --> 0:19:59.399 Yeah, and you're like, well that's you know, not that 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:04.000 much better. That is a mind boggling improvement in efficiency 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:09.880 over the existing technology that was just out of the gate. 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:15.600 It was revolutionary. And like you said, I think Friedrich Krup. 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:18.680 Is that how you pronounced his last name? Yeah, he 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:20.600 was an early investor, And I was like, that name 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:23.199 sounds very familiar. And I went and looked him up 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:26.880 on Wikipedia, in honor of my reformed view of Wikipedia, 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:29.679 and I found out that it was, in fact who 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:33.479 I've been calling Krupp, the same Krupper Krup family that 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:42.040 gave rise to the Tyson Krup International mega conglomerate from Europe. 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:46.480 It might be okay, so Tyson Krup, you're familiar with 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:48.760 that company, right, They're just enormous? 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:49.440 Sure? 0:20:49.520 --> 0:20:52.639 Two, Yeah, that's right. And so I was reading a 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:55.280 little bit about Friedrich Croup on Wikipedia and little known 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:58.720 fact he used to write a giraffe everywhere he went. 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:05.960 As you do. I have a few quotes if I may, 0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:09.560 because it's really hard to overstate, like you were saying, 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:15.159 what a leap forward this was in technology. One of 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:18.760 his biographers, a man named It's last name is a Brunt, 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:25.360 said it was the most disruptive technology in history. Winston 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:29.400 Churchill called it the most perfect maritime masterpiece of the century. 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:31.760 And if you're wondering what maritime has to do with it, 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:35.080 we'll get to that. And then no less than Edison 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:38.240 said it was one of the greatest achievements of mankind. 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:42.040 So that's how big of a deal the diesel engine was. 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:47.440 Yeah, And again, so Rudolph is like, like, this is happening, 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:49.879 Like I'm making this happen like this, the people in 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:53.879 the country, in the rural countryside are going to be saved, 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:58.359 Like this whole industrialization thing is going to be reversed 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:01.080 and kind of mellowed out and smooth dover, and the 0:22:01.080 --> 0:22:04.800 world's going to be saved, essentially. And it just did 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:06.960 not quite go that way. I mean, just the very 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:09.560 fact that he had wincient triciall weighing in on how 0:22:09.600 --> 0:22:12.000 great it was kind of gives you an indication that 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:14.000 it did not go the way that he wanted. 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:16.760 Yeah. Well, one thing that did go the way he 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:19.200 wanted was he made a ton of money off this thing. 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:24.960 Once he had a working prototype, people started literally lining 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:28.199 up to get a license for this thing, just a 0:22:28.240 --> 0:22:30.280 license to build it. Like they had to figure out 0:22:30.280 --> 0:22:32.600 how to build it and how to mass produce it 0:22:32.640 --> 0:22:36.080 and everything. But he ended up selling twenty two different 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:39.280 licenses over a two year period in eighteen ninety seven 0:22:39.320 --> 0:22:44.280 and eighteen ninety eight alone to people like Watson and 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:50.719 Yarn and Yarien in Scotland. Augustus Bush bought the United 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:53.480