The Development of the Diesel Engine

Abstract

In 1912, when the diesel engine was about twenty years old, just coming of age after a prolonged infancy and a painful adolescence, it was the subject of a celebrated controversy, in which the inventor, Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913), and two distinguished professors of engineering discussed the very topic that concerns us in this symposium: the distinctions among invention, development, and innovation as parts of the total process of technological evolution. These three words are commonly used rather loosely, and I do not need to make very sharp distinctions among them because my main point is that in the real world the three processes to which these words refer are not sharply separated. But let me begin by saying that I am thinking of an invention as the appearance of an idea in someone's mind, an event in intellectual history; of development as the conversion of an idea into some kind of workable reality, such as an engine that runs; and of innovation as the introduction of the developed invention into the economy as a useful, salable product. The 1912 controversy began when Diesel heard that Adolph Nagel of Dresden was planning a book on the history of the diesel engine. Diesel was naturally nervous about what Nagel would say, for he was a sensitive and proud man, and there had been some troublesome uncertainties and misunderstandings about the invention of his engine and the validity of his patent. So the inventor prepared his own account of the origin of his engine and presented it at a meeting of the German Society of Naval Architects in November 1912. In the discussion period following the paper, two professors launched an attack on Diesel that raised disturbing questions about his professional integrity. Their main point was that the engine that emerged from the development process was not the same as the engine that Diesel invented, and that credit for it should go to the practical engineers who