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 is dependent upon 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 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.

Diesel was ten years younger than Edison and Westinghouse and five years senior to Ford yet his technological achievements must rank with theirs in relation to the production and utilization of power. Unlike the Americans, however, Diesel was much more the theoretical engineer and much less the mechanic. His career provides an interesting and contrasting case study of the inventor-entrepreneur. -Harvard Business Review

This sympathetic and well-written biography also illuminates the . . . times in which
he lived. . . . A worthwhile addition to both technical and general collections. -Library Journal

W. Robert Nitske was a lifelong student of the internal-combustion engine and wrote several books and many articles for periodicals. Charles Morrow Wilson was the author of more than twenty books, among them Stars is God’s Lanterns: An Offering of Ozark Tellin’ Stories, also published by the University of Oklahoma Press.