Read: The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel by Douglas Brunt 📚

Monday, June 23, 2025

Safe to skim everything before Chapter 24 (which covers Diesel inventing his engine and getting rich in a boringly methodical way) because all the interesting stuff about his disappearance is in the last third. #Booksky #amreading #bookstodon

… and it’s weirdly underdeveloped, as though the author is far more interested in the licensing agreements Diesel had with foreign engine makers than - [SPOILERS] - the British secret service making him disappear and secretly setting him up in a new life with his wife in Canada to stop the Germans forcing him to make submarines for them to win WW1.

There are literally two sentences about his wife’s disappearance and perfunctory research.

And there’s strangely little about the fuel we call diesel now, as opposed to petrol or gasoline. Diesel engines can run on anything that will ignite under pressure and Diesel the man specifically wanted them not to use oil-based fuel. However, Rockefeller somehow managed to ensure his oil company got in on the act, hence the oil based fuel we now call diesel. However, this is skimmed over in the book, in favour of copious infodumps of Diesel’s tours of America and development agreements with other companies.

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