On February 17, 1894, the Diesel engine was operated successfully for the first time. Since then it has been a prime mover for civilization, and today much of the world depends on it as a source of power. Nowhere, perhaps, is it in more widespread use than in America, where the word “diesel” is a part of our language.
Rudolf Diesel: Pioneer of the Age of Power
is the first English-language publication of Rudolph Diesel’s biography. Authors W. Robert Nitske and Charles Morrow Wilson offer a warm and moving account of Diesel from the time of his birth in Paris in 1858 to his mysterious death in 1913. They present Diesel as he was—a man who lived, worked, and invented so far ahead of his time that the world is only now beginning to catch up to him.