Rudolf Diesel: an Appreciation
806 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN Octoher J�, 1918 Rudolf Diesel: An Appreciation The Significance of a Great Inventor's Work By Henry Harrison Suplee HERE are inventors and inventors! operation. The motor of Diesel, on the contrary, was England and America, are interested in this modern T The old-time idea of an inventor was a man who, first worked out wholly on paper, as a rational applica power machine. It propels practically all the effective ><uddenly, in some occult manner, conceived the idea of tion of theoretical principles, and then and not until submarine vessels in service, it is entering into the mer :,;omething new, wonderful, and valuable, and who then then, was a machine built. At this time the best ther chant marine, and unless the ship on the water is super spent the rest of his life trying to get capitalists inter mal efficiency of the steam engine, and that in large seded by the ship in the air, it must enter the naval ested in it; a man who was lucky if he did not die poor units, was about 15 per cent. The early Diesel engines service of all progressive powers. and enrich others after he was gone_ of small size, 20 to 30 horse-power, showed immediately The contrast between this modern method of produc The modern inventor is something quite otherwise; an efficiency of more than 30 per cent; and the thermal ing power from fuel �ith the older machine, the steam a trained engineer, who, perceiving the defect in some efficiency, or percentage of total heat value in the fuel engine, is interesting.
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