Engineering Fate: The Life and Death of Rudolf Diesel

Daisy Eagan (0:01)

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What extent is the inventor responsible for their invention? When a new development in history gives way to conflicting interests, whose target lands on whose back? Or is that narrative just an intriguing idea attempting to clarify a much murkier story?

Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Eagan. Many of my opinions come from instinct and common sense, more than from rigorously proven logic. Like, if we treated all people with common dignity, humanity and respect, the world would generally be a better place. Or if you give a computer all the knowledge and history of humankind, it will decide the human race should be obliterated. I'm not a particularly smart man, Jenny, but- That just kind of feels correct. Another example is that I believe that Big Oil conspired to suppress the electrical engine and ripped railroad tracks across our country out. I'm going to force Americans into their oil guzzling automobiles. I don't really have proof of this, but knowing what I know about how the so-called free market works, I wouldn't be surprised. And frankly, I wouldn't put it past a man who was known to hire goons to beat up his own factory workers to have one of his main competitors bumped off. The story of Rudolf Diesel's mysterious disappearance, however, may be slightly less easily concluded.

Rudolf Diesel was born in March 1858 in Paris, France, to German parents. He himself said he was born on the third, but his biographer, Douglas Brunt, claimed it was actually the 18th. Either way, it doesn't matter. He was born at some point in there. His mother was a music and language teacher, and his father was a leather craftsman, who mainly made book bindings, but also dabbled in toys, purses, and gun holsters. The Diesels had two other children. Rudolf was the middle child with two sisters. According to a piece on the website, Factinate by Brendan da Costa, Rudolf was put to work as early as age two. Rudolf was a curious and precocious child. He would often take things apart to see how they worked and draw sketches of complicated machinery. According to Brunt, his father recognized Rudolf's potential, but did not want to see him expand his horizons past the leather workshop.

When he was seven years old, Rudolf took apart the family's prized cuckoo clock to understand its operation. The family was set to go on a trip that afternoon, and Rudolf thought he could disassemble and reassemble the clock before anyone would find out and before they were supposed to leave. He did not, in fact, finish putting the clock back together in time, and as a punishment, his father beat him with a leather strap, no doubt of his own making, and shackled him to the sofa, leaving him alone while the family went out as planned.