For more than a century, the Diesel engine has been the backbone of heavy industry. The internal combustion engine that ignites fuel by heating it up through compression powers everything from tractors to trucks. But for decades, historians have been puzzled by the mysterious disappearance of its inventor, who vanished 103 years ago today while taking a steamship across the English Channel.
Rudolf Diesel was a talented inventor who designed devices from refrigerators to steam engines, but his eponymous engine is what he is best known for. A trained engineer, Diesel became interested in developing a new kind of internal combustion engine in the late 1880s, as he believed that he could devise one that was more powerful and efficient than the gas engines that were becoming widely used at the time, as the Encyclopedia Britannica notes.
