Saturday, March 18th, is National Biodiesel Day and the birthday of Rudolph Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine.
Born
in 1858 in Paris, France to German parents, Rudolph Diesel was a considered a good student and schooled in the Ecole
Primaire Superieure and, later, Technische Hochschule. He developed the concept of using high-pressure to ignite fuel
in an internal combustion engine instead of spark plugs. Because his engines were similar to Herbert Akroyd Stuart, he
was involved in several patent disputes, eventually winning them.
Diesel originally used peanut oil for his
engines. A year before his mysterious death, he said, “the use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem
insignificant today, but such oils may become, in the course of time, as important as petroleum and the coal tar
products of the present time.”
Rudolph Diesel was also a protégé to refrigeration
pioneer Carl von Linde and is credited with some of that appliance’s processes.