ABSTRACT
The story of diesel engines actually begins with the question of how one actually lights a re. The common, ordinary match (Chapter 7) is only about 150 years old. Practical lighters go back about a century.* Before the development of the match, there were various cumbersome ways of lighting res, such as int-and-steel sets to strike sparks or devices for rapidly rotating wooden rods and using the friction heat to ignite tinder. (Tinder is any readily combustible material such as dried cloth, wood shavings, or small twigs.) The easiest way to start a re was to “borrow re” from the neighbors, by obtaining an already glowing piece of coal or charcoal from them. But, there was still a need to have a portable and convenient way of starting a re. One device for doing that, which might be considered an early forerunner of the lighter, was the re piston.
