Charles William Siemens was born on April 4, 1823, at the little
village of Lenthe, about eight miles from Hanover, where his father, Mr.
Christian Ferdinand Siemens, was 'Domanen-pachter,' and farmed an estate
belonging to the Crown. His mother was Eleonore Deichmann, a lady of
noble disposition, and William, or Carl Wilhelm, was the fourth son of
a family of fourteen children, several of whom have distinguished
themselves in scientific pursuits. Of these, Ernst Werner Siemens, the
fourth child, and now the famous electrician of Berlin, was associated
with William in many of his inventions; Fritz, the ninth child, is the
head of the well-known Dresden glass works; and Carl, the tenth child,
is chief of the equally well-known electrical works at St. Petersburg.
Several of the family died young; others remained in Germany; but
the enterprising spirit, natural to them, led most of the sons
abroad--Walter, the twelfth child, dying at Tiflis as the German Consul
there, and Otto, the fourteenth child, also dying at the same place.
It would be difficult to find a more remarkable family in any age or
country. Soon after the birth of William, Mr. Siemens removed to a
larger estate which he had leased at Menzendorf, near Lubeck.
As a child William was sensitive and affectionate, the baby of the
family, liking to roam the woods and fields by himself, and curious to
observe, but not otherwise giving any signs of the engineer. He received
his education at a commercial academy in Lubeck, the Industrial School
at Magdeburg (city of the memorable burgomaster, Otto von Guericke), and
at the University of Gottingen, which he entered in 1841, while in his
eighteenth year. Were he attended the chemical lectures of Woehler, the
discoverer of organic synthesis, and of Professor Himly, the well-known
physicist, who was married to Siemens's eldest sister, Mathilde. With
a year at Gottingen, during which he laid the basis of his theoretical
knowledge, the academical training of Siemens came to an end, and he
entered practical life in the engineering works of Count Stolberg, at
Magdeburg. At the University he had been instructed in mechanical
laws and designs; here he learned the nature and use of tools and the
construction of machines. But as his University career at Gottingen
lasted only about a year, so did his apprenticeship at the Stolberg
Works. In this short time, however, he probably reaped as much advantage
as a duller pupil during a far longer term.
Young Siemens appears to have been determined to push his way
forward. In 1841 his brother Werner obtained a patent in Prussia for
electro-silvering and gilding; and in 1843 Charles William came to
England to try and introduce the process here. In his address on
'Science and Industry,' delivered before the Birmingham and Midland
Institute in 1881, while the Paris Electrical Exhibition was running,
Sir William gave a most interesting account of his experiences during
that first visit to the country of his adoption.
'When,' said he, 'the electrotype process first became known, it excited
a very general interest; and although I was only a young student at
Gottingen, under twenty years of age, who had just entered upon his
practical career with a mechanical engineer, I joined my brother, Werner
Siemens, then a young lieutenant of artillery in the Prussian service,
in his endeavours to accomplish electro-gilding; the first impulse
in this direction having been given by Professor C. Himly, then
of Gottingen. After attaining some promising results, a spirit of
enterprise came over me, so strong that I tore myself away from the
narrow circumstances surrounding me, and landed at the east end of
London with only a few pounds in my pocket and without friends, but with
an ardent confidence of ultimate success within my breast.
'I expected to find some office in which inventions were examined into,
and rewarded if found meritorious, but no one could direct me to such
a place. In walking along Finsbury Pavement, I saw written up in large
letters, "So-and-so" (I forget the name), "Undertaker," and the thought
struck me that this must be the place I was in quest of; at any rate, I
thought that a person advertising himself as an "undertaker" would not
refuse to look into my invention with a view of obtaining for me the
sought-for recognition or reward. On entering the place I soon convinced
myself, however, that I came decidedly too soon for the kind of
enterprise here contemplated, and, finding myself confronted with the
proprietor of the establishment, I covered my retreat by what he must
have thought a very lame excuse. By dint of perseverance I found my
way to the patent office of Messrs. Poole and Carpmael, who received me
kindly, and provided me with a letter of introduction to Mr. Elkington.
Armed with this letter, I proceeded to Birmingham, to plead my cause
before your townsman.
'In looking back to that time, I wonder at the patience with which Mr.
Elkington listened to what I had to say, being very young, and scarcely
able to find English words to convey my meaning. After showing me what
he was doing already in the way of electro-plating, Mr. Elkington sent
me back to London in order to read some patents of his own, asking me to
return if, after perusal, I still thought I could teach him anything. To
my great disappointment, I found that the chemical solutions I had
been using were actually mentioned in one of his patents, although in
a manner that would hardly have sufficed to enable a third person to
obtain practical results.
On my return to Birmingham I frankly stated what I had found, and with
this frankness I evidently gained the favour of another townsman of
yours, Mr. Josiah Mason, who had just joined Mr. Elkington in business,
and whose name, as Sir Josiah Mason, will ever be remembered for his
munificent endowment of education. It was agreed that I should not
be judged by the novelty of my invention, but by the results which I
promised, namely, of being able to deposit with a smooth surface 30 dwt.
of silver upon a dish-cover, the crystalline structure of the deposit
having theretofore been a source of difficulty. In this I succeeded, and
I was able to return to my native country and my mechanical engineering
a comparative Croesus.
'But it was not for long, as in the following year (1844) I again landed
in the Thames with another invention, worked out also with my brother,
namely, the chronometric governor, which, though less successful,
commercially speaking, than the first, obtained for me the advantage of
bringing me into contact with the engineering world, and of fixing
me permanently in this country. This invention was in course of time
applied by Sir George Airy, the then Astronomer-Royal, for regulating
the motion of his great transit and touch-recording instrument at the
Royal Observatory, where it still continues to be employed.
'Another early subject of mine, the anastatic printing process, found
favour with Faraday, "the great and the good," who made it the subject
of a Friday evening lecture at the Royal Institution. These two
circumstances, combined, obtained for me an entry into scientific
circles, and helped to sustain me in difficulty, until, by dint of a
certain determination to win, I was able to advance step by step up
to this place of honour, situated within a gunshot of the scene of
my earliest success in life, but separated from it by the time of a
generation. But notwithstanding the lapse of time, my heart still
beats quick each time I come back to the scene of this, the determining
incident of my life.'
The 'anastatic' process, described by Faraday in 1845, and partly due
to Werner Siemens, was a method of reproducing printed matter by
transferring the print from paper to plates of zinc. Caustic baryta was
applied to the printed sheet to convert the resinous ingredients of
the ink into an insoluble soap, the stearine being precipitated with
sulphuric acid. The letters were then transferred to the zinc by
pressure, so as to be printed from. The process, though ingenious and of
much interest at the time, has long ago been superseded by photographic
methods.
Even at this time Siemens had several irons in the fire. Besides the
printing process and the chronometric governor, which operated by the
differential movement between the engine and a chronometer, he was
occupied with some minor improvements at Hoyle's Calico Printing Works.
He also engaged in railway works from time to time; and in 1846 he
brought out a double cylinder air-pump, in which the two cylinders are
so combined, that the compressing side of the first and larger cylinder
communicated with the suction side of the second and smaller cylinder,
and the limit of exhaustion was thereby much extended. The invention was
well received at the time, but is now almost forgotten.
Siemens had been trained as a mechanical engineer, and, although he
became an eminent electrician in later life, his most important work at
this early stage was non-electrical; indeed, the greatest achievement of
his life was non-electrical, for we must regard the regenerative furnace
as his MAGNUM OPUS. Though in 1847 he published a paper in Liebig's
ANNALEN DER CHEMIE on the 'Mercaptan of Selenium,' his mind was busy
with the new ideas upon the nature of heat which were promulgated by
Carnot, Clayperon, Joule, Clausius, Mayer, Thomson, and Rankine. He
discarded the older notions of heat as a substance, and accepted it as
a form of energy. Working on this new line of thought, which gave him an
advantage over other inventors of his time, he made his first attempt
to economise heat, by constructing, in 1847, at the factory of Mr.
John Hick, of Bolton, an engine of four horse-power, having a condenser
provided with regenerators, and utilising superheated steam. Two
years later he continued his experiments at the works of Messrs. Fox,
Henderson, and Co., of Smethwick, near Birmingham, who had taken the
matter in hand. The use of superheated steam was, however, attended
with many practical difficulties, and the invention was not entirely
successful, but it embraced the elements of success; and the Society of
Arts, in 1850, acknowledged the value of the principle, by awarding Mr.
Siemens a gold medal for his regenerative condenser. Various papers read
before the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Institution of Civil
Engineers, or appearing in DINGLER'S JOURNAL and the JOURNAL OF THE
FRANKLIN INSTITUTE about this time, illustrate the workings of his mind
upon the subject. That read in 1853, before the Institution of Civil
Engineers, 'On the Conversion of Heat into Mechanical Effect,' was
the first of a long series of communications to that learned body, and
gained for its author the Telford premium and medal. In it he contended
that a perfect engine would be one in which all the heat applied to the
steam was used up in its expansion behind a working piston, leaving none
to be sent into a condenser or the atmosphere, and that the best results
in any actual engine would be attained by carrying expansion to the
furthest possible limit, or, in practice, by the application of a
regenerator. Anxious to realise his theories further, he constructed a
twenty horse-power engine on the regenerative plan, and exhibited it
at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855; but, not realising his
expectations, he substituted for it another of seven-horse power,
made by M. Farcot, of Paris, which was found to work with considerable
economy. The use of superheated steam, however, still proved a drawback,
and the Siemens engine has not been extensively used.
On the other hand, the Siemens water-meter, which he introduced in 1851,
has been very widely used, not only in this country, but abroad. It acts
equally well under all variations of pressure, and with a constant or an
intermittent supply.
Meanwhile his brother Werner had been turning his attention to
telegraphy, and the correspondence which never ceased between the
brothers kept William acquainted with his doings. In 1844, Werner,
then an officer in the Prussian army, was appointed to a berth in the
artillery workshops of Berlin, where he began to take an interest in
the new art of telegraphy. In 1845 Werner patented his dial and printing
telegraph instruments, which came into use all over Germany, and
introduced an automatic alarm on the same principle. These inventions
led to his being made, in 1846, a member of a commission in Berlin
for the introduction of electric telegraphs instead of semaphores.
He advocated the use of gutta-percha, then a new material, for the
insulation of underground wires, and in 1847 designed a screw-press for
coating the wires with the gum rendered plastic by heat. The following
year he laid the first great underground telegraph line from Berlin to
Frankfort-on-the-Main, and soon afterwards left the army to engage
with Mr. Halske in the management of a telegraph factory which they had
conjointly established in 1847. In 1852 William took an office in John
Street, Adelphi, with a view to practise as a civil engineer. Eleven
years later, Mr. Halske and William Siemens founded in London the house
of Siemens, Halske & Co., which began with a small factory at Millbank,
and developed in course of time into the well-known firm of Messrs.
Siemens Brothers, and was recently transformed into a limited liability
company.
In 1859 William Siemens became a naturalised Englishman, and from this
time forward took an active part in the progress of English engineering
and telegraphy. He devoted a great part of his time to electrical
invention and research; and the number of telegraph apparatus of all
sorts--telegraph cables, land lines, and their accessories--which have
emanated from the Siemens Telegraph Works has been remarkable. The
engineers of this firm have been pioneers of the electric telegraph in
every quarter of the globe, both by land and sea. The most important
aerial line erected by the firm was the Indo-European telegraph line,
through Prussia, Russia, and Persia, to India. The North China cable,
the Platino-Brazileira, and the Direct United States cable, were laid
by the firm, the latter in 1874-5 So also was the French Atlantic cable,
and the two Jay Could Atlantic cables. At the time of his death the
manufacture and laying of the Bennett-Mackay Atlantic cables was in
progress at the company's works, Charlton. Some idea of the extent of
this manufactory may be gathered from the fact that it gives employment
to some 2,000 men. All branches of electrical work are followed out
in its various departments, including the construction of dynamos and
electric lamps.
On July 23, 1859, Siemens was married at St. James's, Paddington, to
Anne, the youngest daughter of Mr. Joseph Gordon, Writer to the Signet,
Edinburgh, and brother to Mr. Lewis Gordon, Professor of Engineering in
the University of Glasgow, He used to say that on March 19 of that year
he took oath and allegiance to two ladies in one day--to the Queen and
his betrothed. The marriage was a thoroughly happy one.
Although much engaged in the advancement of telegraphy, he was also
occupied with his favourite idea of regeneration. The regenerative
gas furnace, originally invented in 1848 by his brother Friedrich,
was perfected and introduced by him during many succeeding years.
The difficulties overcome in the development of this invention were
enormous, but the final triumph was complete.
The principle of this furnace consists in utilising the heat of the
products of combustion to warm up the gaseous fuel and air which
enters the furnace. This is done by making these products pass through
brickwork chambers which absorb their heat and communicate it to the gas
and air currents going to the flame. An extremely high temperature is
thus obtained, and the furnace has, in consequence, been largely used in
the manufacture of glass and steel.
Before the introduction of this furnace, attempts had been made to
produce cast-steel without the use of a crucible--that is to say, on
the 'open hearth' of the furnace. Reaumur was probably the first to show
that steel could be made by fusing malleable iron with cast-iron. Heath
patented the process in 1845; and a quantity of cast-steel was actually
prepared in this way, on the bed of a reverberatory furnace, by Sudre,
in France, during the year 1860. But the furnace was destroyed in the
act; and it remained for Siemens, with his regenerative furnace, to
realise the object. In 1862 Mr. Charles Atwood, of Tow Law, agreed to
erect such a furnace, and give the process a fair trial; but although
successful in producing the steel, he was afraid its temper was not
satisfactory, and discontinued the experiment. Next year, however,
Siemens, who was not to be disheartened, made another attempt with a
large furnace erected at the Montlucon Works, in France, where he was
assisted by the late M. le Chatellier, Inspecteur-General des Mines.
Some charges of steel were produced; but here again the roof of the
furnace melted down, and the company which had undertaken the trials
gave them up. The temperature required for the manufacture of the
steel was higher than the melting point of most fire-bricks. Further
endeavours also led to disappointments; but in the end the inventor was
successful. He erected experimental works at Birmingham, and gradually
matured his process until it was so far advanced that it could be
trusted to the hands of others. Siemens used a mixture of cast-steel
and iron ore to make the steel; but another manufacturer, M. Martin,
of Sireuil, in France, developed the older plan of mixing the cast-iron
with wrought-iron scrap. While Siemens was improving his means
at Birmingham, Martin was obtaining satisfactory results with a
regenerative furnace of his own design; and at the Paris Exhibition of
1867 samples of good open-hearth steel were shown by both manufacturers.
In England the process is now generally known as the 'Siemens-Martin,'
and on the Continent as the 'Martin-Siemens' process.
The regenerative furnace is the greatest single invention of Charles
William Siemens. Owing to the large demand for steel for engineering
operations, both at home and abroad, it proved exceedingly remunerative.
Extensive works for the application of the process were erected at
Landore, where Siemens prosecuted his experiments on the subject with
unfailing ardour, and, among other things, succeeded in making a basic
brick for the lining of his furnaces which withstood the intense heat
fairly well.
The process in detail consists in freeing the bath of melted pig-iron
from excess of carbon by adding broken lumps of pure hematite or
magnetite iron ore. This causes a violent boiling, which is kept up
until the metal becomes soft enough, when it is allowed to stand to let
the metal clear from the slag which floats in scum upon the top. The
separation of the slag and iron is facilitated by throwing in some lime
from time to time. Spiegel, or specular iron, is then added; about 1 per
cent. more than in the scrap process. From 20 to 24 cwt. of ore are used
in a 5-ton charge, and about half the metal is reduced and turned into
steel, so that the yield in ingots is from 1 to 2 per cent. more than
the weight of pig and spiegel iron in the charge. The consumption of
coal is rather larger than in the scrap process, and is from 14 to 15
cwt. per ton of steel. The two processes of Siemens and Martin are often
combined, both scrap and ore being used in the same charge, the latter
being valuable as a tempering material.
At present there are several large works engaged in manufacturing the
Siemens-Martin steel in England, namely, the Landore, the Parkhead
Forge, those of the Steel Company of Scotland, of Messrs. Vickers & Co.,
Sheffield, and others. These produced no less than 340,000 tons of steel
during the year 1881, and two years later the total output had risen to
half a million tons. In 1876 the British Admiralty built two iron-clads,
the Mercury and Iris, of Siemens-Martin steel, and the experiment
proved so satisfactory, that this material only is now used in the Royal
dockyards for the construction of hulls and boilers. Moreover, the use
of it is gradually extending in the mercantile marine. Contemporaneous
with his development of the open-hearth process, William Siemens
introduced the rotary furnace for producing wrought-iron direct from the
ore without the need of puddling.
The fervent heat of the Siemens furnace led the inventor to devise a
novel means of measuring high temperatures, which illustrates the value
of a broad scientific training to the inventor, and the happy manner in
which William Siemens, above all others, turned his varied knowledge to
account, and brought the facts and resources of one science to bear upon
another. As early as 1860, while engaged in testing the conductor of the
Malta to Alexandria telegraph cable, then in course of manufacture, he
was struck by the increase of resistance in metallic wires occasioned by
a rise of temperature, and the following year he devised a thermometer
based on the fact which he exhibited before the British Association
at Manchester. Mathiessen and others have since enunciated the
law according to which this rise of resistance varies with rise of
temperature; and Siemens has further perfected his apparatus, and
applied it as a pyrometer to the measurement of furnace fires. It forms
in reality an electric thermometer, which will indicate the temperature
of an inaccessible spot. A coil of platinum or platinum-alloy wire is
enclosed in a suitable fire-proof case and put into the furnace of which
the temperature is wanted. Connecting wires, properly protected, lend
from the coil to a differential voltameter, so that, by means of
the current from a battery circulating in the system, the electric
resistance of the coil in the furnace can be determined at any moment.
Since this resistance depends on the temperature of the furnace, the
temperature call be found from the resistance observed. The instrument
formed the subject of the Bakerian lecture for the year 1871.
Siemens's researches on this subject, as published in the JOURNAL OF THE
SOCIETY OF TELEGRAPH ENGINEERS (Vol. I., p. 123, and Vol. III., p. 297),
included a set of curves graphically representing the relation between
temperature and electrical resistance in the case of various metals.
The electric pyrometer, which is perhaps the most elegant and original
of all William Siemens's inventions, is also the link which connects his
electrical with his metallurgical researches. His invention ran in two
great grooves, one based upon the science of heat, the other based upon
the science of electricity; and the electric thermometer was, as it
were, a delicate cross-coupling which connected both. Siemens might have
been two men, if we are to judge by the work he did; and either half
of the twin-career he led would of itself suffice to make an eminent
reputation.
The success of his metallurgical enterprise no doubt reacted on his
telegraphic business. The making and laying of the Malta to Alexandria
cable gave rise to researches on the resistance and electrification of
insulating materials under pressure, which formed the subject of a paper
read before the British Association in 1863. The effect of pressure
up to 300 atmospheres was observed, and the fact elicited that the
inductive capacity of gutta-percha is not affected by increased
pressure, whereas that of india-rubber is diminished. The electrical
tests employed during the construction of the Malta and Alexandria
cable, and the insulation and protection of submarine cables, also
formed the subject of a paper which was read before the Institution of
Civil Engineers in 1862.
It is always interesting to trace the necessity which directly or
indirectly was the parent of a particular invention; and in the great
importance of an accurate record of the sea-depth in which a cable
is being laid, together with the tedious and troublesome character of
ordinary sounding by the lead-line, especially when a ship is actually
paying out cable, we may find the requirements which led to the
invention of the 'bathometer,' an instrument designed to indicate the
depth of water over which a vessel is passing without submerging a line.
The instrument was based on the ingenious idea that the attractive power
of the earth on a body in the ship must depend on the depth of water
interposed between it and the sea bottom; being less as the layer of
water was thicker, owing to the lighter character of water as compared
with the denser land. Siemens endeavoured to render this difference
visible by means of mercury contained in a chamber having a bottom
extremely sensitive to the pressure of the mercury upon it, and
resembling in some respects the vacuous chamber of an aneroid barometer.
Just as the latter instrument indicates the pressure of the atmosphere
above it, so the bathometer was intended to show the pull of the earth
below it; and experiment proved, we believe, that for every 1,000
fathoms of sea-water below the ship, the total gravity of the mercury
was reduced by 1/3200 part. The bathometer, or attraction-meter, was
brought out in 1876, and exhibited at the Loan Exhibition in South
Kensington. The elastic bottom of the mercury chamber was supported by
volute springs which, always having the same tension, caused a portion
of the mercury to rise or fall in a spiral tube of glass, according to
the variations of the earth's attraction. The whole was kept at an even
temperature, and correction was made for barometric influence. Though
of high scientific interest, the apparatus appears to have failed at the
time from its very sensitiveness; the waves on the surface of the sea
having a greater disturbing action on its readings than the change of
depth. Siemens took a great interest in this very original machine, and
also devised a form applicable to the measurement of heights. Although
he laid the subject aside for some years, he ultimately took it up
again, in hopes of producing a practical apparatus which would be of
immediate service in the cable expeditions of the s.s. Faraday.
This admirable cable steamer of 5,000 tons register was built for
Messrs. Siemens Brothers by Messrs. Mitchell & Co., at Newcastle. The
designs were mainly inspired by Siemens himself; and after the Hooper,
now the Silvertown, she was the second ship expressly built for cable
purposes. All the latest improvements that electric science and naval
engineering could suggest were in her united. With a length of 360 feet,
a width of 52 feet, and a depth of 36 feet in the hold, she was fitted
with a rudder at each end, either of which could be locked when desired,
and the other brought into play. Two screw propellers, actuated by a
pair of compound engines, were the means of driving the vessel, and they
were placed at a slight angle to each other, so that when the engines
were worked in opposite directions the Faraday could turn completely
round in her own length. Moreover, as the ship could steam forwards
or backwards with equal ease, it became unnecessary to pass the cable
forward before hauling it in, if a fault were discovered in the part
submerged: the motion of the ship had only to be reversed, the stern
rudder fixed, and the bow rudder turned, while a small engine was
employed to haul the cable back over the stern drum, which had been used
a few minutes before to pay it out.
The first expedition of the Faraday was the laying of the Direct United
States cable in the winter of 1874 a work which, though interrupted by
stormy weather, was resumed and completed in the summer of 1875. She
has been engaged in laying several Atlantic cables since, and has been
fitted with the electric light, a resource which has proved of the
utmost service, not only in facilitating the night operations of
paying-out, but in guarding the ship from collision with icebergs in
foggy weather off the North American coast.
Mention of the electric light brings us to an important act of the
inventor, which, though done on behalf of his brother Werner, was
pregnant with great consequences. This was his announcement before
a meeting of the Royal Society, held on February 14, 1867, of the
discovery of the principle of reinforcing the field magnetism of
magneto-electric generators by part or the whole of the current
generated in the revolving armature--a principle which has been applied
in the dynamo-electric machines, now so much used for producing electric
light and effecting the transmission of power to a distance by means of
the electric current. By a curious coincidence the same principle was
enunciated by Sir Charles Wheatstone at the very same meeting; while a
few months previously Mr. S. A. Varley had lodged an application for
a British patent, in which the same idea was set forth. The claims
of these three inventors to priority in the discovery were, however,
anticipated by at least one other investigator, Herr Soren Hjorth,
believed to be a Dane by birth, and still remembered by a few living
electricians, though forgotten by the scientific world at large, until
his neglected specification was unexpectedly dug out of the musty
archives of the British Patent Office and brought into the light.
The announcement of Siemens and Wheatstone came at an apter time than
Hjorth's, and was more conspicuously made. Above all, in the affluent
and enterprising hands of the brothers Siemens, it was not suffered to
lie sterile, and the Siemens dynamo-electric machine was its offspring.
This dynamo, as is well known, differs from those of Gramme and
Paccinotti chiefly in the longitudinal winding of the armature, and it
is unnecessary to describe it here. It has been adapted by its inventors
to all kinds of electrical work, electrotyping, telegraphy, electric
lighting, and the propulsion of vehicles.
The first electric tramway run at Berlin in 1879 was followed by another
at Dusseldorf in 1880, and a third at Paris in 1881. With all of these
the name of Werner Siemens was chiefly associated; but William Siemens
had also taken up the matter, and established at his country house
of Sherwood, near Tunbridge Wells, an arrangement of dynamos and
water-wheel, by which the power of a neighbouring stream was made to
light the house, cut chaff turn washing-machines, and perform other
household duties. More recently the construction of the electric
railway from Portrush to Bushmills, at the Giant's Causeway, engaged his
attention; and this, the first work of its kind in the United Kingdom,
and to all appearance the pioneer of many similar lines, was one of his
very last undertakings.
In the recent development of electric lighting, William Siemens, whose
fame had been steadily growing, was a recognised leader, although
he himself made no great discoveries therein. As a public man and
a manufacturer of great resources his influence in assisting the
introduction of the light has been immense. The number of Siemens
machines and Siemens electric lamps, together with measuring instruments
such as the Siemens electro-dynamometer, which has been supplied to
different parts of the world by the firm of which he was the head, is
very considerable, and probably exceeds that of any other manufacturer,
at least in this country.
Employing a staff of skilful assistants to develop many of his
ideas, Dr. Siemens was able to produce a great variety of electrical
instruments for measuring and other auxiliary purposes, all of which
bear the name of his firm, and have proved exceedingly useful in a
practical sense.
Among the most interesting of Siemens's investigations were his
experiments on the influence of the electric light in promoting
the growth of plants, carried out during the winter of 1880 in the
greenhouses of Sherwood. These experiments showed that plants do not
require a period of rest, but continue to grow if light and other
necessaries are supplied to them. Siemens enhanced the daylight, and, as
it were, prolonged it through the night by means of arc lamps, with the
result of forcing excellent fruit and flowers to their maturity before
the natural time in this climate.
While Siemens was testing the chemical and life-promoting influence of
the electric arc light, he was also occupied in trying its temperature
and heating power with an 'electric furnace,' consisting of a plumbago
crucible having two carbon electrodes entering it in such a manner that
the voltaic arc could be produced within it. He succeeded in fusing
a variety of refractory metals in a comparatively short time: thus, a
pound of broken files was melted in a cold crucible in thirteen minutes,
a result which is not surprising when we consider that the temperature
of the voltaic arc, as measured by Siemens and Rosetti, is between
2,000 and 3,000 Deg. Centigrade, or about one-third that of the probable
temperature of the sun. Sir Humphry Davy was the first to observe the
extraordinary fusing power of the voltaic arc, but Siemens first applied
it to a practical purpose in his electric furnace.
Always ready to turn his inventive genius in any direction, the
introduction of the electric light, which had given an impetus to
improvement in the methods of utilising gas, led him to design a
regenerative gas lamp, which is now employed on a small scale in this
country, either for street lighting or in class-rooms and public
halls. In this burner, as in the regenerative furnace, the products
of combustion are made to warm up the air and gas which go to feed the
flame, and the effect is a full and brilliant light with some economy of
fuel. The use of coal-gas for heating purposes was another subject which
he took up with characteristic earnestness, and he advocated for a time
the use of gas stoves and fires in preference to those which burn coal,
not only on account of their cleanliness and convenience, but on the
score of preventing fogs in great cities, by checking the discharge
of smoke into the atmosphere. He designed a regenerative gas and coke
fireplace, in which the ingoing air was warmed by heat conducted from
the back part of the grate; and by practical trials in his own office,
calculated the economy of the system. The interest in this question,
however, died away after the close of the Smoke Abatement Exhibition;
and the experiments of Mr. Aiken, of Edinburgh, showed how futile was
the hope that gas fires would prevent fogs altogether. They might indeed
ameliorate the noxious character of a fog by checking the discharge
of soot into the atmosphere; but Mr. Aiken's experiments showed that
particles of gas were in themselves capable of condensing the moisture
of the air upon them. The great scheme of Siemens for making London a
smokeless city, by manufacturing gas at the coal-pit and leading it in
pipes from street to street, would not have rendered it altogether a
fogless one, though the coke and gas fires would certainly have reduced
the quantity of soot launched into the air. Siemens's scheme was
rejected by a Committee of the House of Lords on the somewhat mistaken
ground that if the plan were as profitable as Siemens supposed, it would
have been put in practice long ago by private enterprise.
From the problem of heating a room, the mind of Siemens also passed to
the maintenance of solar fires, and occupied itself with the supply
of fuel to the sun. Some physicists have attributed the continuance
of solar heat to the contraction of the solar mass, and others to the
impact of cometary matter. Imbued with the idea of regeneration, and
seeking in nature for that thrift of power which he, as an inventor,
had always aimed at, Siemens suggested a hypothesis on which the sun
conserves its heat by a circulation of its fuel in space. The elements
dissociated in the intense heat of the glowing orb rush into the cooler
regions of space, and recombine to stream again towards the sun, where
the self-same process is renewed. The hypothesis was a daring one, and
evoked a great deal of discussion, to which the author replied with
interest, afterwards reprinting the controversy in a volume, ON THE
CONSERVATION OF SOLAR ENERGY. Whether true or not--and time will
probably decide--the solar hypothesis of Siemens revealed its author
in a new light. Hitherto he had been the ingenious inventor, the
enterprising man of business, the successful engineer; but now he took a
prominent place in the ranks of pure science and speculative philosophy.
The remarkable breadth of his mind and the abundance of his energies
were also illustrated by the active part he played in public matters
connected with the progress of science. His munificent gifts in the
cause of education, as much as his achievements in science, had brought
him a popular reputation of the best kind; and his public utterances in
connection with smoke abatement, the electric light. Electric railways,
and other topics of current interest, had rapidly brought him into a
foremost place among English scientific men. During the last years of
his life, Siemens advanced from the shade of mere professional celebrity
into the strong light of public fame.
President of the British Association in 1882, and knighted in 1883,
Siemens was a member of numerous learned societies both at home
and abroad. In 1854 he became a Member of the Institution of Civil
Engineers; and in 1862 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
He was twice President of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and the
Institution of Mechanical Engineers, besides being a Member of Council
of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and a Vice-President of the Royal
Institution. The Society of Arts, as we have already seen, was the first
to honour him in the country of his adoption, by awarding him a gold
medal for his regenerative condenser in 1850; and in 1883 he became
its chairman. Many honours were conferred upon him in the course of
his career--the Telford prize in 1853, gold medals at the various great
Exhibitions, including that of Paris in 1881, and a GRAND PRIX at the
earlier Paris Exhibition of 1867 for his regenerative furnace. In 1874
he received the Royal Albert Medal for his researches on heat, and in
1875 the Bessemer medal of the Iron and Steel Institute. Moreover, a few
days before his death, the Council of the Institution of Civil Engineers
awarded him the Howard Quinquennial prize for his improvements in the
manufacture of iron and steel. At the request of his widow, it took the
form of a bronze copy of the 'Mourners,' a piece of statuary by J. G.
Lough, originally exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851, in the
Crystal Palace. In 1869 the University of Oxford conferred upon him the
high distinction of D.C.L. (Doctor of Civil Law); and besides being
a member of several foreign societies, he was a Dignitario of the
Brazilian Order of the Rose, and Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
Rich in honours and the appreciation of his contemporaries, in the prime
of his working power and influence for good, and at the very climax of
his career, Sir William Siemens was called away. The news of his death
came with a shock of surprise, for hardly any one knew he had been ill.
He died on the evening of Monday, November 19, 1883, at nine o'clock. A
fortnight before, while returning from a managers' meeting of the Royal
Institution, in company with his friend Sir Frederick Bramwell, he
tripped upon the kerbstone of the pavement, after crossing Hamilton
Place, Piccadilly, and fell heavily to the ground, with his left arm
under him. Though a good deal shaken by the fall, he attended at his
office in Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster, the next and for several
following days; but the exertion proved too much for him, and almost for
the first time in his busy life he was compelled to lay up. On his last
visit to the office he was engaged most of the time in dictating to his
private secretary a large portion of the address which he intended to
deliver as Chairman of the Council of the Society of Arts. This was on
Thursday, November 8, and the following Saturday he awoke early in the
morning with an acute pain about the heart and a sense of coldness in
the lower limbs. Hot baths and friction removed the pain, from which he
did not suffer much afterwards. A slight congestion of the left lung was
also relieved; and Sir William had so far recovered that he could leave
his room. On Saturday, the 17th, he was to have gone for a change of air
to his country seat at Sherwood; but on Wednesday, the 14th, he appears
to have caught a chill which affected his lungs, for that night he was
seized with a shortness of breath and a difficulty in breathing. Though
not actually confined to bed, he never left his room again. On the last
day, and within four hours of his death, we are told, his two medical
attendants, after consultation, spoke so hopefully of the future, that
no one was prepared for the sudden end which was then so near. In the
evening, while he was sitting in an arm-chair, very quiet and calm,
a change suddenly came over his face, and he died like one who falls
asleep. Heart disease of long standing, aggravated by the fall, was the
immediate cause; but the opinion has been expressed by one who knew
him well, that Siemens 'literally immolated himself on the shrine of
labour.' At any rate he did not spare himself, and his intense devotion
to his work proved fatal.
Every day was a busy one with Siemens. His secretary was with him in
his residence by nine o'clock nearly every morning, except on Sundays,
assisting him in work for one society or another, the correction of
proofs, or the dictation of letters giving official or scientific
advice, and the preparation of lectures or patent specifications. Later
on, he hurried across the Park 'almost at racing speed,' to his offices
at Westminster, where the business of the Landore-Siemens Steel Company
and the Electrical Works of Messrs. Siemens Brothers and Company was
transacted. As chairman of these large undertakings, and principal
inventor of the processes and systems carried out by them, he had a
hundred things to attend to in connection with them, visitors to see,
and inquiries to answer. In the afternoon and evenings he was generally
engaged at council meetings of the learned societies, or directory
meetings of the companies in which he was interested. He was a man who
took little or no leisure, and though he never appeared to over-exert
himself, few men could have withstood the strain so long.
Siemens was buried on Monday, November 26, in Kensal Green Cemetery. The
interment was preceded by a funeral service held in Westminster Abbey,
and attended by representatives of the numerous learned societies of
which he had been a conspicuous member, by many leading men in all
branches of science, and also by a large body of other friends and
admirers, who thus united in doing honour to his memory, and showing
their sense of the loss which all classes had sustained by his death.
Siemens was above all things a 'labourer.' Unhasting, unresting
labour was the rule of his life; and the only relaxation, not to say
recreation, which he seems to have allowed himself was a change of task
or the calls of sleep. This natural activity was partly due to the spur
of his genius, and partly to his energetic spirit. For a man of his
temperament science is always holding out new problems to solve and
fresh promises of triumph. All he did only revealed more work to be
done; and many a scheme lies buried in his grave.
Though Siemens was a man of varied powers, and occasionally gave himself
to pure speculation in matters of science, his mind was essentially
practical; and it was rather as an engineer than a discoverer that he
was great. Inventions are associated with his name, not laws or new
phenomena. Standing on the borderland between pure and applied science,
his sympathies were yet with the latter; and as the outgoing President
of the British Association at Southport, in 1882, he expressed the
opinion that 'in the great workshop of nature there are no lines
of demarcation to be drawn between the most exalted speculation and
common-place practice.' The truth of this is not to be gain-said, but it
is the utterance of an engineer who judges the merit of a thing by
its utility. He objected to the pursuit of science apart from its
application, and held that the man of science does most for his kind who
shows the world how to make use of scientific results. Such a view was
natural on the part of Siemens, who was himself a living representative
of the type in question; but it was not the view of such a man as
Faraday or Newton, whose pure aim was to discover truth, well knowing
that it would be turned to use thereafter. In Faraday's eyes the new
principle was a higher boon than the appliance which was founded upon
it.
Tried by his own standard, however, Siemens was a conspicuous benefactor
of his fellow-men; and at the time of his decease he had become our
leading authority upon applied science. In electricity he was a pioneer
of the new advances, and happily lived to obtain at least a Pisgah view
of the great future which evidently lies before that pregnant force.
If we look for the secret of Siemens's remarkable success, we shall
assuredly find it in an inventive mind, coupled with a strong commercial
instinct, and supported by a physical energy which enabled him to labour
long and incessantly. It is told that when a mechanical problem was
brought to him for solution, he would suggest six ways of overcoming the
difficulty, three of which would be impracticable, the others feasible,
and one at least successful. From this we gather that his mind was
fertile in expedients. The large works which he established are also a
proof that, unlike most inventors, he did not lose his interest in an
invention, or forsake it for another before it had been brought into the
market. On the contrary, he was never satisfied with an invention until
it was put into practical operation.
To the ordinary observer, Siemens did not betray any signs of the
untiring energy that possessed him. His countenance was usually serene
and tranquil, as that of a thinker rather than a man of action; his
demeanour was cool and collected; his words few and well-chosen. In his
manner, as well as in his works, there was no useless waste of power.
To the young he was kind and sympathetic, hearing, encouraging,
advising; a good master, a firm friend. His very presence had a calm and
orderly influence on those about him, which when he presided at a Public
meeting insensibly introduced a gracious tone. The diffident took
heart before him, and the presumptuous were checked. The virtues which
accompanied him into public life did not desert him in private. In
losing him, we have lost not only a powerful intellect, but a bright
example, and an amiable man.