Comment: Rudolf Diesel

Reminded me of the story of Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine. He originally designed the engine to run on peanut oil / vegetable oil. He saw it as a answer to providing growing markets for farming and to support the sector. He also realized it burned relatively clean.

BP & Shell Oil thought differently. After they refined gasoline the heavy stuff was left over. Outside of burning it in furnaces it didn't have much use... until it was realized that it worked in diesel engines.

Meanwhile Rudolf was doing extremely well, happy, successful, celebrated & seeing his vision through. On a boat trip across the channel to the UK he supposedly decides to jump into the water and commit suicide...

Shortly thereafter, BP & Shell tag his name to their petroleum product and call it "diesel fuel"... It never ran on vegetable oil again.