Transcripts For CSPAN3 Douglas 20240704

Im the interlocutor. Im joking. And this is the author, doug. And were here to talk about the mysterious case of Rudolf Diesel. I wouldnt. This is amanda appeared in september 29, 1913, and went off a boat that was going between belgium and britain. The obvious question is, did he jump or was he pushed . I wouldnt dream of trying to answer that because otherwise you wont have any fun reading the book. Its a little like reading the last chapter of an Agatha Christie in, you know, whats the point you need to get should the build up . And i recommend the build up because its a really terrific read. But lets start somewhere else. Im curious. I mean, i and i think maybe other people in the audience know you as a novelist and indeed not an historical novelist. Very contemporary. Wall street professional tennis. Main topic of today, etc. And though its true that this book still has the novelists eye for detail and concerned with character and above all, pacing that reads if there can be such a thing as page turning history, this is page turning history, but its still a different animal. And im curious about the process. What was the process like for you to go from one to the other and why did you i mean, why this story . Why this book . How did it come about . Okay. Before i fully answer that question in my tangent here, ashley will be relevant, but i, i want to say that you are part of this. This is a bit of a full circle tangent because joe and i have been friends for about ten years and i just want to make sure i think most of the people in the room already know who we are in the presence of, but some may not. And so before joe is writing big blockbuster bestsellers like the good german, which was made into a movie with George Clooney and cate blanchett, he was also one of the most prior to the writing. He was one of the most powerful editing executives in the city. He ran Houghton Mifflin and other other big posts. And so ive always really valued his counsel. And i spoke to him, you know, over this period of friendship of ten years. And i had heard the name Peter Borland from from joe on numerous occasions. He always spoke highly of peter and from other circles. Id heard the name as well. So i knew peter by reputation only. And when i had my agent said, you know, as you do these days with the email, you can blast the proposal to 30 people and then a number respond. And then you have meetings and things. My agent said, you know, Peter Borland did. S. A. Is interest. I thought, oh my gosh. And i if my agent were here, he would swear to this. I said, look, if this is it, all things being even close to equal, i would love this to land with peter s. A. Because it is my first go at nonfiction and i would like to have a really strong editor who will dig in with me and make this a great book. And so of course, i did land with peter boylan, who was in the room and a terrific editor, and really had played a huge bob role, particularly with the structure of the book. But to answer your question on why nonfiction, i came to diesel and the story about eight years ago when i bought a boat and it was a larger boat. It needed some work and i was going to fix the boat up and i was talking to the guy, the boat yard and i said, what should i do with this old boat . And he said, well, the first thing you ought to do is switch these old gasoline engines out for diesel and like many people, maybe in the room at that time, i didnt know much about diesel. I remember seeing it at the fueling station. You can get diesel or gas. I just sort of thought it referred to a fuel and not any particularly different engine at that time. And so i said, why diesel . And he said, well, because the fuel is more stable that it wont there wont be fumes. 100 of boat fires come from gasoline engines, zero from diesel. I could take a lit match and drop it into a barrel of diesel fuel and nothing will happen. The fuel efficiency is four times on your 200 gallon tank of fuel. You go four times as far. So we repower two diesel and about a year later i was in between novels. Ive, as joe said, i had previously written mostly fiction. And so i was goofing around on the internet as i do, looking for ideas and hoping something will will catch on and i came across this list of mysterious disappearances at sea. And on the list was Rudolf Diesel. And i thought, i wonder if this has anything to do with these diesels. I just bought. And so i clicked on the events. And you alluded to he disappears in 1913 on the eve of world war one. And its its a crazy, crazy story of disappearance. And its hard to imagine what it was like at that time. What a what a global celebrity he was. Todays equivalent would be if elon musk suddenly disappeared overnight and newspaper headlines were splashed all over new york city in western europe and russia with the that the mysterious disappearance of this great inventor. So i mean reels at that you. Yeah yeah yeah. So i, i at first was thinking i might do it as historical fiction and i read more about it and i thought, well, theres so little written, i mean, alarmingly little written about Rudolf Diesel in the english language. There are a couple sort of academic biographies from the sixties and seventies and eighties, and i thought, well, ive got the scaffolding of a story. You know, maybe i can just make up the dialog and well do historical fiction, but the more i got into it, the more i had a vision of what it could be. And i realized this needs to be told as nonfiction. And as you know, from some of my novels in the past, ive always done a lot of research for my books. I wrote a book called trophy son, which is about tennis, and its really about our societys increasing emphasis on single sport specialization for early youth. And tennis is really at the extreme end of that. And, you know, if youre a good tennis player, you sometimes get pulled out of school and go to a Tennis Academy or Something Like that. And so i interviewed james blake and john isner and did dozens and dozens of interviews and lots of research. So i loved the Research Piece and the more that i found, the more that i found that my theory of the case was right. So the book, it starts out as a biography of diesel and and the suspects and we can get into that. But it also becomes an investigative of what happened. And it was sort of like the geeky side of indiana jones. It wasnt the whips and the boulders, you know, chasing around, but it was finding these weird little pieces of paper in an archive that, in the context of the case, were treasure. And so peter helped me along quite a bit on the nonfiction piece, and i was aware that figuring out the notes section and all my sourcing and stuff was going to be challenging. So i tried to be diligent about that through the process and theres some technical differences as well. If you you know, with fiction, i write by hand, i write on a yellow legal pad and i, i can cross things out and, you know, move them around with the nonfiction. And i could write, you know, in a number on a plane or a cafe, which i would often do as joe and i met writing at the New York Public Library in midtown. But with nonfiction, i write. I key it all in, right in the laptop. I have to be in my place. Ive got stacks of secondary materials, all around me and i need an interconnect internet connection. Whereas with fiction i try not to have that. But you know, you want to. If hes crossing the London Bridge in 1880, you want to know where i was . There a gas lab . And what did that look like . And just little tangent pieces of Quick Research youd want to know. So it was a very different process. But the research and the love of the research was the same in both cases. I must say one of the nice things about reading a book by a friend is that youre constantly surprised at what theyre pulling off on the page. I mean, particularly enjoyed the technical aspects of this book, which surprised me because im probably the least mechanical person doug knows. And i thought, if i can understand this engine, anybody can understand it. And there would be from time to time the moments when id go, whoa, doug, how do you know this . I mean, you have to go to an auto body shop to know stuff like this. I didnt. I thought too, that diesel, in fact, was just another gas that you got at the pump. But i had no idea. But since you took this on and since i get to ask the questions, just to show that you really do know this, could you explain to people who like me, probably didnt know what is a Diesel Engine exactly and how does it work . Joe said, if i dont like the question, i can just pivot to whatever i want so that. Its its very different in the sense of, well, for example, the gasoline engines are well, theyre you got to sort of back up and think about the era. So its sort of a steam engines, which is external combustion. And so these great ships, if you think about the titanic or the lusitania in one image, i try to evoke in the book is if you remember that scene in the movie titanic, they go down into the belly of the ship and there are dozens of sweating backs and men shoveling coal into these orange fiery furnaces. And those furnaces burn the coal and heat the giant vats of water. Literally the same concept as a pot on a stove to make the water boil and create steam that moves the gears of the engine. I mean, its incredibly inefficient. How much heat is lost in that situation. It requires a whole chimney apparatus to get the smoke and smog and partially burnt particles of coal out of the ship. These dozens i mean, in the case of those titanic, hundreds of men need to sleep on the ship and eat food. Their rooms full of coal. So, so much space is wasted to this, whereas the Diesel Engine draws fuel automated, not liquid fuel automatically down from a tank. Theres no chimney apparatus required at all. Theres very little exhaust that is just vented out the side of the ship. So on the deck of the ship, you dont have giant furnaces or tunnels of smokestacks. You know, the funnels for the for the smoke is just a clear deck for cargo or in the case of a warship for guns to be able to point to any point on the horizon. And its two, three, four times more efficient than gas and and from the steam engine more like five times six times more efficient the way that the engine itself works. So it is internal combustion and Rudolf Diesel wrote in his notes that he first got the idea for this from his University Days when they were looking at a a tinder lighter, which is really the shape of like a bicycle tire pump. So its a cylinder, a glass cylinder and with a tinder lighter, you, you insert at the end a piece of tinder thats easily lit, and then you jam down the plunger and that quick compression of air create a High Temperature. So then the tinder starts to glow and light. And that was his idea for the engine. Its its as simple as that. Like a bicycle tire pump on the extremely High Pressure. So the pressure comes down to 900, 1,000 pounds per square inch. And only then does the fuel combust. So it wont it wont light with a match or anything like that. But that High Temperature under that High Pressure, it then explodes and blows the piston back out. So thats the concept of the of the Diesel Engine. And you dont have to start the fires to get it going. You dont you dont no spark ignition and exactly for for a steamship with one of the one of the ideas with the Diesel Engine is theres it can be on a cold start so you can just start it right up in your often running with the steamship you need to get the coal burning, generate the heat, get the water hot, get the water boiling. And so if youre a ship of war in port, it might be 3 hours before you can go out and engage the enemy. So with diesel, you just say, lets go and youre off. And so its a huge Strategic Military advantage to have the cold start to the engine as opposed to steam in that era. So didnt i say it would be easy to understand . It really is. I mean, this was like 15 drafts with peter to try to get this down and you get it. If you read the book, it sounds even better. It all became clear to me when i read about the bicycle pump, because its true that if you pump it once or twice, its hot. It just gets the heat is conducted there. And i thought, oh, is that how it works . After all these years of seeing it . Its amazing. And so 120 years, its still essentially the same technology. There are many improvements to the to the pollution aspects of it. And but the fundamental aspect of the engine is still the same as High Pressure engine. The fuel explodes inside the cylinder under High Pressure. One of the entertaining aspects of this book is simply that period of engineering and invention and development of these kinds of machines. I guess it would be the early equivalent of the apple five or, you know, the new cell phone thats coming out. And there was a great deal of excitement. Youd go to paris exhibitions and people would look at giant turbines and say, you know, isnt this cool . Isnt this swift. Insofar as that is the case, though, there was an interesting line early on in the book where you say it was the most Disruptive Technology in history. Who did it disrupt and now this gets a little bit into the murder suspects. Is it okay to go there, do you think its your book . Yeah. So when diesel disappeared september 29, 1913, hes traveling on an overnight passenger ferry from belgium to Great Britain. And in the night he disappears. Its a calm window. This night the seas are coming. Its not like he got washed overboard in the morning. He is supposed to meet his traveling companions for breakfast at 6 a. M. And they go to look for him and hes not there. And theyll check a state room and hes not there. They hold the ship at sea, search it all. They find is his hat and his coat neatly folded by the stern of the ship, by the rail, seeming to mark where he went over. So, of course, the newspaper headlines do their thing. They they speculate suicide. But two other theories of murder emerged. One suspect was kaiser wilhelm. The second the emperor of germany and the other was john rockefeller, the richest man in the world and and founder of standard oil. And both had a motive to do it. Both viewed him as an existential threat. And so to get to the disruptive point, taking standard oil first, rockefeller had become the richest man in the world. Standard oil was found in 1870. By 1900, hes the richest man in the world selling kerosene he drilled for petroleum, distilled kerosene for illumination. Rockefeller was really in the illumination business at that time. Gasoline was a wasteful byproduct that they threw away and by the 1900 edison and others had come along with electric light bulb, which was going to completely cripple the Kerosene Market for illumination. Clearly, the light bulb was the future. So they were going to do to rockefeller. What rockefeller had done to the whaling business. You know, we used to get whale blubber for elimination, then kerosene came along. Now is the light bulb. So rockefeller scrambling for a new revenue market. And at that time, it really was not settled in the 20th century that our fuel for the century was going to be petroleum and gasoline line. In 1905 here in new york city, we had a fleet of hundreds of new york city taxicabs, all elected. Rik there was a charging station on broadway in times square and so now we think elon musk and these newfangled electric cars will know that was going on 120 years ago and edison was trying to figure out the Battery Technology and struggled to do so. So just as rockefeller is losing his illumination business and trying to get the internal Combustion Engine market to accept gasoline and become addicted to gasoline, along comes Rudolf Diesel, who has an engine that can run on a range of fuels. Diesel won the 1900 paris worlds fair on a Diesel Engine running peanut oil. And he advocated that we have farmers. We can grow our own fuel. Every nation can. We can essentially have fuel independence. We dont need to run around two areas. The war of the world, where theres petroleum and then fight wars over that. And so this was an existential threat to rockefellers future, who was already vulnerable because of the end of the Kerosene Market and who turns out not to be quite as noble is the foundation that he later funded. There was several nemeses and in this book you would think that a man is perfectly nice as Rudolf Diesel. I mean, theres nothing in the record that says that he was in any way nasty or means spirited. He acquired a lot of enemies who truly were and one of the fun parts of the book, i think, was just to be reminded of how really rapacious and violent that period in American Economic ex was. I mean, we know laughingly referred to the robber barons and, you know, they made the country what it is and they thought, well, but they did with a lot of crackheads going into it. And we forget this. The pinkertons were practically an army unleashed on unions. And i thought, now or we think of pinkertons, as, you know, were Dashiell Hammett worked and it was all fun, but it wasnt fun. Shall we go to the kaiser from brock rockefeller . It turns out to be a really bad and to. Yeah, yeah you know tier tier thought there ill make one more point on rockefeller before going to the kaiser because the pinkertons is a great example and you can see why headlines would make the leap that that someone like rockefeller or big oil would hire the Pinkerton Detective agency or baldwin felts was another that essentially acted as the paramilitary wing of of the big trust, whether it be steel, tobacco, sugar or oil, to break up these strike lines, either asking for the, you know, a workday, you know, put diesel over there is threatening the entire thing. So, you know, to have a pinkerton guy go take care of diesel wasnt a stretch for the for the newspaper headlines to get there in the case of the kaiser the the era of european diplomacy at that time this was a era of heightened militarism, heightened nationalism and a very high stakes german, anglo naval arms race. Germany, after, you know, in 1870, when when rudolf first left paris, he was of dramatic origin, but was born in paris in 1858. And then the francoprussian war came along in 1870. So anyone of dramatic origin was kicked out of paris. So he basically left as a, as a refugee. And at that time, the germanic states, it was really like germany didnt exist as we have come to know in the 20th century was 39 different states like prussia and bavaria and other things, and it after the francoprussian war, german industry, though, began to grow leaps and bounds under bismarck and kaiser wilhelm, the first by kaiser wilhelm, the second. Hes really looking to expand the german empire. There. They have the strongest land based army in europe. Their industry is growing and he feels in order to feed the growth of the german industry, they need colonies, they need an imperial structure. In fairness, much like what Great Britain has, they have colonies all over the world that can bring Natural Resources back to the to the homeland for growth. So he wants that and he realizes in order to do that, he needs a strong navy. But britain, since the time of defeating napoleon, has controlled the season. And as an island nation, they feel that its existential for them to maintain control of the seas. So germany and kaiser wilhelm, the second trying to build a strong navy is a threat to them. Thats their number one threat. And. Just in 1913 and in the years prior, a little bit, the Diesel Engine has emerged as the only viable engine for the submarine or the uboat. Right. And the navy of every major power now is scrambling for submarine power and for diesel expertise. And the engine is still young at this point. And diesel, the creator is still the main expert in developing the technology for the exacting requirements of undersea use and when he was traveling across the north sea in september of 1913, he was on his way to Great Britain as cofounder and Board Director of a new Diesel Engine Manufacturing Company in Great Britain, whose mandate was to build diesels for the royal navys submarine program. So you can imagine the kaiser is thinking hard. No, on that. And so that was part of the reason that the kaiser found himself in the headlines as a suspect for murder as well. And he was only one of several, i think that its the development of the engine itself, surprisingly, when you read this is a lot of fun to read and in the way that old movies will present the development of some scientific breakthrough. I mean, we just assume that it happens overnight and that its created and its fine. But a lot of mistakes are made along the way and you go through various plateaus of success with this. Theres even a scene in the book where theyre doing an experiment and it blows up and they have to hit the floor. And i thought, whoa, this is exactly what we would do if we were making the movie. Its a lot of fun. Heat. Nevertheless, did succeed, became very rich. The patent, i think, was 1897. It was taken out. He filed the patent 1892 and another one in 93. And then last in 15 years, i believe. Thats right. So by 0708, these are expiring. And then theres theres a sort of a next level of proliferation out. And other Companies Jumping in, jumping in. And by that time he has acquired not only enemies, but some very good friends and allies. I think youll be pleased to read about adolphus busch. Avenge your bush and saint louis, who is an old pal of his alfred nobel, which leads me to actually another thing. This is one of these books i dont know if you like me where the footnotes are so much fun. I love footnotes in books and i think that they just sprawl all over the place and give you little bits of information that arent necessarily germane to the story. You know, diesel disappears. Thats really what were on about in this book. On the other hand, theres one wonderful footnote about alfred nobel who invented dynamite and whose brother ludvig died, and they mistake and let the newspaper ran an obit of alfred. They assumed it was alfred who had died and ran a scathing obituary, talking about him as someone who has destroyed more lives than any other man. And his legacy will be awful. And as hes reading this and you can imagine the waves, if this were a cartoon coming out of his head, he decides to sort of a Jimmy Stewart movie. He decides to correct his life and he sets up in his will the nobel foundation, so that he will be known as the patron of peace and scientific progress. But up until then, if he hadnt seen his own obit, nobody knows what would have happened in oslo. But isnt that a fun footnote . I mean, i didnt know it. Maybe you did, but it was new to me. I thought it was great. Yeah. I love that story and im so happy to hear you say about that, about the footnotes, because that is that is another area where peter peters become a theme in this discussion. But you and i would wrestle over these things because not only are there probably 200 pages that hit the floor on this because we got to stay on the diesel thrusts. But, you know, we want to build the story, the structure of the book in the sense is weve got diesel, weve got the two main suspects. And as you explore the decades that the quarter century leading to world war one and bring these three figures together and you understand why they had a motive to kill diesel, you really understand the period. Its sort of like this gilded age period that i refer to as, you know, Downton Abbey the early seasons prior to that hinge point in history of world war one, when we really started living in a different way. But the footnotes i not only are there 200 pages where i just had to cut it out, we are we going to stay here . Lets, lets cant go too far afield, even though its super fun. Same thing with the footnotes. I mean, there i might have had 400 footnotes in the first draft. We probably got it down. Jono peter 80 or Something Like that. But i wanted to make sure it got to a point where they were fun and a joy and a treasure because it is annoying. I mean, i understand the counterpoint. You dont want to read a line like, oh my god, another footnote, i got to go down and then back up. And thats annoying. And i get it, but i try to trim them and make them special enough that you were oh, i get to go down again. Like, thats exciting. Its going to be something cool and worth it and things you didnt know before. Ill give you one more. As long as were doing that, its sort of like raisins in the fruitcake. You know, little wonderful things. These fruit. Thats right. There was it turns out that the brits wanted to develop a an armored land vehicle. And it was a secret project before the first world war, the characteristically did not tell any of the guards or people working at the factory what they were actually working on or what they were making, and in fact would say as parts would arrive at the gates to the factory over, these are sections of the water tanks. So it became known among the workers as the tank project and eventually the vehicle itself was called the tank. Isnt that cool . I never knew that and i never thought twice. Your tank, i you just sort of accepted. Thats the name when you think of it. Why in the world, why they call it a tank . And there we go. Right. So we come to yet another mystery about diesel, i think insofar as he is persuasively argued, to be on a par with marconi and Thomas Edison and some of the other great innovators of technology that made the century possible, why have we so easily forgotten him . I think most people dont know that diesel is even someones name. They think the engine or the fuel, but as a person, which will be corrected, of course, by all the people who read this book, because then youll know for sure who he is and why hes important to us and the relevance that he continues to have. But how soon people can be forgotten. I mean, at the time of the disappearance, as you say, its like elon musk every newspaper was covering it at crazy from one edition to the next. But this lasted two weeks, three weeks . Yeah. A bit longer. But and then, of course, world war one comes along nine months later. So at that point, its just everythings off the front page. But that and then he just of disappears among the people that he meets. By the way, just as long as its done my mind, theres a wonderful passage of a visit to Thomas Edison. We dont have edisons version of this visit. We only have diesels. But talking a little bit about that, i mean, they should have got on like a house of fire, but somehow it was one of those visits that did not go well. Yeah, they did not get along great, actually. If i could pick up on your earlier thing of why hes forgotten, because i want to say one quick thing on that and the edison scene is just so fun in the book. There are a couple of reasons for that. If you go to the encyclopedia britannica, it presumes suicide. And i think that just the presumption of suicide, theres a sort of sadness about it in it. I think that impaired his legacy in some way. And then the other reason is something youll find out in the book. There is a reason, and its part of the you know, one of the reviews calls it the greatest keeper of the 20th century. Theres a keeper in here that partly explains why he has been scrubbed from history. So those two things, i think are part of it. But as a results, you know, we run around mistakenly spelling diesel with a lowercase d, you know, not in the way that we treat forward or chrysler events and and you talk about his relevance even today. I mean, think about it. And this is something ive been on book tours. This is a spiel where you can sort of like pull the string on my back, but we, you know, think about a piece of fruit grown in a tropical region, every piece of heavy machinery and Farm Equipment used to grow that piece of fruit, diesel. Its then loaded onto a truck. Anything larger than a passenger car, diesel. And a third of the passenger cars, too, by the way, goes down to port where a crane, diesel powered lowers it onto a cargo ship. 100 of cargo ships around the world. Diesel powered goes across the oceans into port crane truck on a crane onto a truck, onto a train trains throughout the 20th century, diesel. Theres no Global Economy as we know it today without diesel, nothing moves without it. And that continues to this day. And the fundamental function of the energy of the engine itself is the same as what diesel introduced in 1897. So its a shame that hes not up there with ford edison, tesla, marconi, the wright brothers. He really should be. Hes done more for the way we live today over the last hundred 20 years than any other inventor. And i went with my wife to paris to do some research on the book, and we found his child at home. You know, where hes born. Were spent roughly his first 12 years of his life in paris. And we found this little plaque. I was like, oh, i wonder what well find when we get there. Above, well above head, height. So not even in your eyeline. Theres this plaque about a foot by a foot, basically just saying this was diesels childhood home and theres graffiti and stickers around it. I mean, its the saddest, most like the deficit of appreciation for the guy is is amazing. And i hope that, you know, getting this book out will will change some of that cheer. So so but on to edison, who is the other part . Writers have to work going to paris to do their research and take a tax, write off. This isnt filmed right . So you can cut that. Yes. But here your question on edison, who was the other great titan of the time they met. He came diesel came to america in 1912 to 2 trips, one in 1904, one in 1912. He kept detailed diaries as an as an engineer might. And but, you know, he also, i think, was part of the time to really with engineers feeling they have a dual role as engineer and also social theorist to sort of think through the applications of their innovations in society. And how can best be used. So he also was sort of a social theorist and he kept these wonderful diaries of his observations of america at the time, he was appalled at the poor infrastructure. He had come from paris, where they had, by 1900, a metro, an underground metro. They had a sewer system that was big enough to row a boat through it. You know, a city of stone and marble that can support a million people. He comes to these american towns that go up almost, you know, by comparison, overnight, everythings built of wood, no subway sit, no way to, like, figure out the drainage from rain and the number one fear of americans at that time in these cities was fire. You know, these whole neighborhoods would just burn up in a second. They were building metal staircases down from second floor windows. You just couldnt believe some of those things. And you know, on that sort of wood thing, you just as a quick heres another footnote. In Great Britain, you know, the rail systems really ran on coal. They had so much coal in the ground in america. We had so much wood everywhere. Our rails, you know, initially, were they just thrown wood in there . And thats how we ran the steam engines on the trains initially. But you also loved a lot of what he saw in america. He loved the the opportunity to start from scratch, whereas in europe, you had to build the road waves or roadways over the ancient pathways of rome. Here in in america. You could build them wherever you want, wherever it makes the most sense. And he loved the meritocracy of america. He loved that our society wasnt so class oriented, you know, coming from a europe where that was a big thing here, that wasnt such a big thing. And he loved that. Our leaders and our great thinkers were humble and he felt that that humility spread throughout the whole society here when he went to. So in 1912, his last couple of days, he went over to orange, new jersey, and met with Thomas Edison and, you know, they they had a great back and forth. Its captured in a biography, a family biography that Rudolf Diesel son oregon wrote. So as joe said, we dont have Thomas Edisons version of this. But they didnt totally get it wrong. You know, diesel enjoyed his wine. Edison didnt drink diesel. Enjoy the observation that all of edisons inventions were power consuming things like the phonograph and and other devices, the light bulb, whereas diesels was power producing. So that was a distinction that he liked. They had a couple of barbs back and forth where, you know, edison was like, what if a whole bunch of you engine guys got together, you know, the gasoline guys, the and just came up with an engine and he was like, you know, what about this . This crazy novice edison was more home schooled and diesel thought that was like a dubious virtue, you know, having come from these sort of revered german engineering schools. So they had a bit of a back and forth. Its really a fun, fun scene in the book and shows his humor as well. And also an an implication that edison was a little bit of lets throw this mud against the wall and see what sticks and and and a much more instinctive approach. Whereas diesel was the hook School Approach and theres theres a right way to do this and one thing will lead to the next and its a very there once a dramatic approach to the whole process. Whereas edison was all instinct and thats a good idea. Why dont we try that and see if it works . Yeah, thats right. Yeah. Before we throw it open to questions, which i suppose we really should do soon, but theres one more aspect of him that i think bears your comment. Anyway. Commentary he was, as you suggested, not just an inventor and an engineer and someone who put a motor together from a bicycle pump, but someone who had some real thoughts about where all this was going and what the point of it was, was the book called solar dreamers . Yes. That was his 1903 sort of social treatise. Well, if you can explain Diesel Engine, you can explain the diesels philosophy. So what is what is it solely doremus actually wants to do . Well, he he believed in this sort of and, you know, unity and love of of human beings. And he also believed happiness on this earth, not necessarily only in the afterlife. So he was really trying with his engine to strive for the betterment of mankind here. And he when he left paris in 1870, due to the francoprussian war, they were refugees whose penniless shirts on their backs had to their fathers bookbinding workshop in paris because there were riots and looting. And, you know, the streets in paris were going crazy. So they got to london and they were living in tenement house and he lived in the same neighborhood as the setting of charles dickens, oliver twist. And he was the same age as oliver twist. He was 12 years old. He was there watching kids go off into factories, into, you know, smog, low ventilation, working long hours. Youd really just saw the guts of the worst of the industrial. And that was part of his inspiration to try to build an engine that could improve this. And it was meant to be a power for rural economies, for Small Businesses and to, you know, improve the Living Conditions for for people in the Industrial Age and a couple of other things on his he considered sort of a citizen of the world. He was with germanic origins, but he had slavic roots. He was born in paris, he lived in london. He traveled to and loved america. So in a time of heightened nationalism, he didnt really consider himself a german nationalist at all. The bavarians were very different from the prussians in that sense, too, you know, berlin is in prussia, munich is in bavaria, augsburg, where hes its been bavaria. They had sort of a different a different culture there. And so he just with the with the books all addressed, miss he was he was looking to and i kind of lost my train of thought actually. I forget what i was saying. I, i think the real point is that he thought at all, i mean, he was not somebody that we could put on just dismiss as an engineer or someone who was involved in an engine. He really gave some thought to what purpose these things were supposed to have, what purpose we all should have in this. You know, we began this session by saying that instead of a novel, you would written a history but think a novel like some of it is. I mean, there he is with his very harsh upbringing. This is a father who used to beat him with a strap. He becomes oliver twist, essentially, and then hes taken up. Someone recognizes his brightness, the fact that hes not just an ordinary kid but really deserves a chance at school and they sponsor him and they promote him and he falls in love with martha and hes crazy for her. And the patents do work in the end and he becomes rich. And, you know, the sort of person who can go and see adolf is bush and just drop in on Thomas Edison if he feels like it. And hes in this glorious villa in munich. So hes reached this stage in life where things are looking good, but then things happen to know what happens. Youre going to have to read the book. So i said, i would not give away the ending then. I really wont. But its, its worth reading. Its really thanks. So, you know the point i was going finish off there was he the irony of his life is all of these good intentions for the engine didnt happen. It was really the opposite. The Diesel Engine became a power source for economic centralization and urbanization, and it was you know, its almost theres this term technical sweetness which refers to the feeling that a scientist or engineer can get the euphoria and excitement as their innovation advances. And that feeling excitement overwhelms any sense of caution about, well, what maybe it shouldnt advance, maybe its going to a good thing. So oppenheimer had oppenheimer had it with a bomb. They talk about it now with people, Software Engineers working on ai and with diesel, too. Like maybe it happened. He was helping that engine work on submarines and uboats. And so while that was certainly never his intention to build the engine to Power Military craft, that is what happened. There would be no submarine warfare in world war one or two without the Diesel Engine, but, uh, nobody was shoveling coal on a submarine, so we needed to do it. Okay. Are there questions we have somebody with a microphone. I think if there are, and then you can speak into the microphone. Yes. How did you do all of the research for the book . It was in the library or you went obviously you said you traveled also. So a bit of both. Its amazing what you can do with what i would call or joke a library research. You can be at your computer, in your chair and for example, with the newspapers know if some were trying to put this all together in 1920 or 25 years after diesel to try to figure out what they were reporting in germany and. And new york and russia. You know, to pull that i think would be nearly impossible. These these print papers are sitting in file cabinets in different cities now. So many of these old papers have been scanned that you can get into certain databases. And, you know, some require subscription, some dont. But you can get in there and do keyword searches and sort through these things and draw connections in a way that you never could. Even 40 years ago or even like ten years ago. So much more get scanned every day. So that was part of it. And then part of the research was done during covid. And so i had to make remote relationships with people in archives. There are two terrific ones in germany. One is man that man and machine in fabric, augsburg, nuremberg and that you know, an earlier form of that. Its been through a number of mergers and things. But the origin of that company was rudolphs main partner in developing the prototype of the engine back from 1892 to 1897, the Deutsches Museum in germany, the church, a war rooms there. There are a number of archives in the uk, even in wisconsin and st louis. The bush sulzer archives of adolphus busch, he a you know, joe alluded to it. He had a major role. He in that time you license the engine by National Territory for the rights to you know, the exclusive rights to manufacture and market the engine and the person who had it in america, in north america was adolphus busch. And he used it to pump water and and power duration in his breweries. But he also had a separate Business Building submarine diesels for the us navy. So theres some archives here as well. Uh, went to paris, australia at home. So theres a museum he used to go to as a child, and we got to walk in that museum and see some of the exhibits that were there. Even in the 1860s, when he would go visit. And of course they they also had some early versions of the Diesel Engine. So the the research was tough it was challenging. A lot of it was, you know, making friends with someone in an archive during those covid years. You know, even the employees going in very much. But the employees would sometimes go and scan things and send it over to me. A lot of it was in german, so i contacted, my old high school, a buddy in the English Department who put me in touch with a guy in the german department, and he translated reams and reams of material for me, including those two diaries from the american in 1904 or 1912, and lots of letters and professional documents that. Yeah, he so i havent finished the book yet, so i dont know how it ends, but i was curious how the Diesel Engine developed to be a petrol based engine as opposed to, you know, a veg oil or palm oil or some other type of oil as it was initially intended. Great question. And you can actually do both. But youre right, it runs primarily now on a petro diesel and a quick back story on rockefeller that will help set that up when he was approaching the Chinese Market for illumination. This is back when kerosene was still his main product in china. They first centuries and centuries have been using natural gas or oils for illumination, and standard oil went in and gave away all these free, beautiful kerosene lamps that they had built. And now here you go. This is what this wonderful kerosene lamp free to you. And now very inexpensive kerosene. And so once you got the Chinese Market addicted to these lamps and kerosene as the fuel for the lamps, the price would slowly go up. And it was the similar kind of manipulation with the Combustion Engine. He needed the world to addicted to that. And so you know rudolph was out in 1912 on his trip through america. He said, and this is all to the media. It was a number of newspapers. He said, i can break the american fuel monopoly and it dont need a law to do it. I dont need the sherman antitrust act to do it. I can do with the power of my technology, thus the existential threat that he represented to diesel, but the infrastructure required to have a huge agriculture, uh, economy to develop that much, you know, whether its nuts or vegetables or whatever, to then refine into the oil. He always made sure that Business Case never made sense. Hes like, ive got all this gasoline. I can sell it here. Like, youll never make money doing that because ive got this other fuel right here that you can use readily. But you know, that said, even now it still happens. Willie nelson 15 years ago and this is another peter thing 15 years ago, Willie Nelson was on his his tour with a tour bus, Diesel Engine bus running recycled kitchen grease, basically vegetable oil. So Diesel Engine can do it this way. It can be done. Who else in the front row. It strikes me i mean, i havent read the book, but it strikes me that you as a fiction writer, that this is the a type of story that needs to be told by a fiction writer, rather than a historian. So can you talk about that kind of that fiction art form, diving into history, but then telling it as a fiction story. Yeah, thats thats an interesting observation because i came into it through the mystery side of it. You know, ive got diesel and these murders suspects. And thats why i was thinking like historical. This is so good. But i do love the Research Piece of it too. And i just felt in order to do this story justice, it needed to be nonfiction. And so what im going for with this is not the big doorstop, but erik larson, david grann style of narrative nonfiction and another i mean the the pioneer of it all is barbara tuchman, whos just terrific. I dont know if anyone here has read either. The Zimmerman Telegram or the guns of august, but shes a beautiful writer. She tells it in a novelistic way. And so its what im aiming at is that narrative nonfiction kind of book where larson and grant are sort of currently the kings. But barbara tuchman, the the beginning of it, i mean, maybe some before her, but shes the one i think of when i think of who who did it first, the best, and who did much of her research in the New York Public Library, where we met doing research. I didnt know that. And thats great. The wertheim room, joe and i have this secret room back there. Its a keycard pass only. And its not just he and i in there. Theres lots of people anyway, sort of doing research in there will get access, but its a really fun place to work. Just a wonderful resource. You know, were lucky in new york to have it. Anyone else. Gentlemen, thank you so very, very much for the wonderful evening given us. Thank you so much. What a pleasure. Thank you welcome to chicago, this historic motor road district. 1905 to 1936. With an emphasis on architecture and automobiles. My name is barba