The interest which has been aroused in this country over the Diesel engine in the past few years is remarkable, but not nearly so much so as the engine itself. Until four years ago there were but few builders of the Diesel engine in America. At the present time there are twenty or more manufacturers building different types of Diesel engines, several of them adopting foreign designs. Between four hundred and five hundred plants in the United States are now being operated with engines of the Diesel type, ranging from one to as high as eighteen engines in a plant.

It has been the duty of one of the authors to visit most of these plants in the capacity of an instructor, and in so doing he became acquainted with the men who are operating and also the knowledge they had of their work.

It is safe to state that not ten per cent of the operators of Diesel engines know one-quarter as much about their engines as the average steam engineer knows about his engine. Naturally there is a reason for this a steam engineer, before he receives his license, is generally compelled to fire a boiler for two or three years and sometimes longer. Then he receives a fireman's license, and in two or three years more of firing the boiler, if he can pass a certain examination, he is eligible to a third class steam engineer's license. They do all this work gladly to learn the business.

With the men who are employed to operate the Diesel engine it is different. No license is required and the majority of men who are employed by the purchaser of a Diesel engine expect to be chief engineers in three weeks.

The Diesel engine, like any other high class machine, needs proper care and attention to get the best results. In fact it requires much more attention than the steam engine and closer attention due to its larger number of working parts, but any average steam engineer after three weeks' thorough instruction and proper application should be able to properly care for and operate an engine of this type without the least trouble.

It is the purpose of this book to give all engineers and those who are interested in the Diesel engine the benefit of many years of practical experience in operating the Diesel engine. As far as the authors know all other books published on the Diesel engine have omitted to deal with this important subject, which after all, is the information most necessary to the purchaser and his engineer; and it is to them that this book is respectfully dedicated.

Interest in the Diesel engine is so widespread and the questions presented so varied that it may be well to review the early history of this remarkable invention.

The Diesel engine was invented in 1892 by the late Dr. Rudolph Diesel of Munich, Germany. The invention was the result of years of painstaking labor, and the one point that stands out most clearly is that had not Diesel been so positive regarding the correctness of his mathematical and thermal calculations he would not have been so persistent with the actual construction of the engine. So we find the calculations of an engineer coupled with the persistence of a genius as responsible for this epoch-making invention.

In the first Diesel engine, constructed in 1893, the piston was fitted with a piston rod and external crosshead, the vertical cylinder having no water jacket. The cam shaft was placed very low and the valves were operated by means of long rods. A wrought iron pipe with riveted flanges was used for storing starting air pressure and there was no air supply pump, the fuel being injected directly. This engine never ran, as at the first injection of fuel, the engine being driven by outside power, an explosion destroyed it. This proved to Dr. Diesel, however, that pure air could be compressed to such a high point that fuel injected into it would ignite and burn.

A second crude engine was then built. It had a base similar to the first, but was provided with a water jacketed cylinder, and the cam shaft was placed higher. The most important difference was that the injection of fuel was operated by air supplied by a pump driven directly from the engine. The second machine would not run and was always a source of danger, but indicator cards were obtained during the few revolutions that it did operate. The first two engines together proved the practical possibility of carrying out the combustion process that had been developed theoretically years before and which had been regarded impossible by the technical world.

Patents were obtained in all of the principal countries, those obtained in England bearing the date of August, 1892. The patents in the United States were taken out slightly later and extended for seventeen years, the life of a patent in this country. During the patent, the use of the invention was limited to one licensee in each of the principal countries. The late Mr. Adolphus Busch of St. Louis, Mo., obtained the sole rights to Diesel's patents in the United States and Canada after a thorough- investigation had been made in his behalf by Colonel E. D. Meier, late president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The patents however, simply stated what was to be done, and were of small practical value from an operating standpoint, as the actual construction of the engine had hardly been started at this time. A company was formed in the United States called the American Diesel Engine Company, organized to build and sell the engine under Diesel's patents. Mr. Busch was a stockholder in this company but his principal contribution lay in the value of the patents he had acquired.

In 1898 a twin cylinder 60 h.p. engine was built, a crude but practicable machine, which was placed in commercial operation under load, being the first Diesel engine in the world to be so operated.

The question is frequently asked why the Diesel engine has made such strides abroad and so little progress has been made in this country. This is due to
several reasons :

First: Coal is much cheaper in the United States than in Europe and therefore it is more wastefully used; while the leading idea in Europe is economy in operating cost, the leading idea in the United States is economy in first cost. The word efficiency is unknown to a vast proportion of businessmen and buyers of machinery in this country while abroad it forms the basis for every contract.

Second: The steam engine in America is much cheaper than abroad, but the Diesel engine is not and will never be a cheap engine. It aims to be the best engine and must be constructed of the highest class of materials with the most skilled workmanship. This makes it difficult for it to compete with the cheaper type of steam engine in the United States. We are accustomed to engines at a low price and the price of the Diesel per pound seems exorbitant.

Third: The lack of capital on the part of the prospective purchasers arid the high rate of interest on capital and investment in the United States hinders the advance of the Diesel.

Fourth: In the last decades the general business profits in America have been so large that little thought was given to the most economical methods of production and the strictest economy in the fuel bill, as well as other expenses, was not taken into earnest consideration, the main object being to manufacture quickly and in quantities, regardless of cost. America has not had to compete with the industrial countries of the world as Europe has.

To these reasons may be added that the financial strength of the American Diesel Engine Company was never vigorous and the exploitation was consequently retarded. The fact that before the expiration of the patents approximately 50,000 h.p. in Diesels were in operation in this country may not appear as so bad a record when all the obstacles it had to overcome are taken into consideration. The American company adhered to practically one basic type during nearly the whole term of the patents, though it has since been superseded and the engines now placed on the market in the United States are abreast of the best European designs in the stationary types of engines. They have not, however, advanced to the large sizes prevailing abroad, for there are at present in operation in Europe engines of 4000 brake h.p., while the largest engine manufactured in this country to date is less than 1000 h.p. in four cylinders.


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