Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Rudolf Diesel, fully Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel

German Inventor and Mechanical Engineer, Famous for inventing the Diesel Engine

"The hope that technology will save us or will miraculously effect our moral improvement is a kind of modern idolatry."

"The diesel engine can be fed with vegetable oils and would help considerably in the development of agriculture of the countries which use it... The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time."

"The automobile engine will come, and then I will consider my life's work complete."

"The use of plant oil as fuel may seem insignificant today. But such products can in time become just as important as kerosene and these coal-tar-products of today."