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From left to right: Rudolf Diesel, Moritz Schröter and Heinrich von Buz at the presentation of the diesel engine in Kassel (1897).
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| The Linde Company was surrounded from its very inception by so-called inventorengineers - as both employees and outside advisers. These included, for instance, Rudolf Diesel, who worked for Linde for 13 years, Mathias Fränkl and Paulus Heylandt.
Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913) was born in Paris and studied ngineering at the Technical University of Munich under Carl von Linde. After receiving an honors-level examination score and completing a practical placement at Sulzer in Switzerland, he went to Paris at the request of Carl von Linde to manage the sales office there starting in 1881. In 1890 Diesel became director of the Linde-Gesellschaft für Kühlhallen in Berlin. |
In addition to his work for Linde, Diesel designed an engine that was driven by an inexpensive fuel instead of steam. When Linde declined to collaborate on the further development of this oil engine, Diesel handed in his notice and after 1893 they went their separate ways. In 1897 Diesel had his first engine built by the Krupp Company in Essen. The new engine soon became widely used, first as a stationary unit and soon after as a ship’s engine as well. It was only later used in standard production in the automobile. Diesel himself survived to witness only a small part of its success. Protracted patent disputes and business failures led to his suspected suicide in the English Channel during the crossing to England.
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| Mathias Fränkl, founder of MAPAG. |
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| Mathias Fränkl (1877-1947) was head of a pipe and tube factory in Bochum. After the end of the war, he founded several small machinery plants, including Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Plattling Aktiengesellschaft (MAPAG) in 1923.
In 1925 he applied for a patent on the alternating switch-over operation of heat exchangers (regenerators). His idea was first to cool the heat exchangers and then in the second step to remove the cold (alternating operation). |
The Linde-Fränkl process, developed together with Linde’s Department B, led to a breakthrough in oxygen top-blowing for steel production after the Second World War by allowing low-cost oxygen production. Fränkl died in 1947. MAPAG, located in the Bavarian city of Horgau, has been fully integrated in the Linde Group since 1990.
Paulus Heylandt (1884-1947), was, like Fränkl, an autodidact. At the age of 18 he applied for patents for liquid air transport cylinders, and one year later built the first air liquefier. His most important invention was the gasifier tank from 1917, in which boiling liquid oxygen could be transported. In 1923 the Linde Company signed a cooperative agreement with Heylandt AG for industrial gas recycling and invested in the company.
In the late 1920s, Heylandt began experimenting with rocket propulsion vehicles. After 1945 he was abducted to the Soviet Union, where he passed away in 1947.
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Test run of the "Heylandt" rocket car at Tempelhof Field in Berlin,
1920s. Standing at the cockpit is Paulus Heylandt.
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