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What did clessie cummins invent

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Became the first American to build and install diesel engines in trucks, buses and passenger cars

Patented 30 products and processes including many fuel injection systems for his engines

Clessie Cummins proved that actions speak louder than words. By the time he was 12, Cummins had built and operated a steam engine. But it was his showmanship that distinguished him from other innovators. He founded the Cummins Engine Company in 1919 and began building marine diesels. Ten years later, when his bank threatened to liquidate his company, Cummins installed the first diesel engine in a car and demonstrated it to his banker. The banker was intrigued, and Cummins’ business survived and grew. Cummins later drove the same diesel-powered car some 800 miles to the New York Auto Show on just $1.38 worth of gas. The following year a Cummins diesel-powered vehicle entered the Indianapolis 500, placing 12th — without a single pit stop. Cummins’ efforts paid off slowly and diesel engines gained increasing acceptance, especially for long distance trucking. Cummins’ bro

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The following is an excerpt from The Diesel Odyssey of Clessie Cummins by C. Lyle Cummins, Jr: a lively historical account of an American entrepreneur and inventor best-known as the father of the American diesel truck. This Clessie Cummins biography ranges from his early exploits as a boy genius through the founding and success of his global brand and company. In this excerpt, read about how diesel inventor Clessie Cummins's inventive streak manifested itself through a series of boyhood mishaps and adventures.

Clessie’s inventive talents surfaced while living in two Ohio towns between the ages of eleven and fifteen. “I was born with a terrific yen for mechanical things and can’t remember when I wasn’t trying to build something. If I wanted a wagon, I had to make one. All were exact imitations of the hoop mill’s log wagons with bolsters to fit any kind of body that was required. Every move we made found me making an immediate acquaintance with the local blacksmith.” Forbearing and forgiving parents often feared what he might do next, but they perceived his inten

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The Diesel Odyssey of Clessie Cummins is a lively historical account of an American entrepreneur and diesel inventor best-known as the father of the American diesel truck. The adventurous path of Clessie Cummins is told from his early exploits as a boy genius through the founding and success of his global brand and company.

Author C. Lyle Cummins, Jr., who is Clessie’s son, peers into every corner of the diesel inventor's life in this Clessie Cummins biography, from his first foray into the engine business at age eleven—when he began building steam engines out of pennies and shotgun shells until a mob of disgruntled locals shut down his enterprise—through a lifetime of miraculous stunts, such as accidentally convincing a town he created an engine that could run on river water! Lyle Cummins recounts memories of his father from his own youth and describes how later, as a practicing engineer, he saw other sides of the man who would become his employer, mentor, and colleague.

Cummins’s formal schooling ended at the eighth grade. Despite that, he generated thirty-three US pate