Siemens telegraph wires gird the earth, and the Siemens cable steamer
_Faraday_ is continually engaged in laying new ones. By the Siemens
method has been solved the problem of fishing out from the stormy
ocean, from a depth comparable to that of the vale of Chamounix,
the ends of a broken cable. Electrical resistance is measured by
the Siemens mercury unit. “Siemens” is written on water meters, and
Russian and German revenue officers are assisted by Siemens apparatus
in levying their assessments. The Siemens process for silvering and
gilding, and the Siemens anastatic printing, mark stages in the
development of these branches of industry. Siemens differential
regulators control the action of the steam-engines that forge the
English arms at Woolwich, and that of the chronographs on which the
transits of the stars are marked at Greenwich. The Siemens caststeel
works and glasshouses, with their regenerative furnaces, are admired
by all artisans. The Siemens electric light shines in assembly-rooms
and public places, and the Siemens gas light competes with it, while
the Siemens electro-culture in greenhouses bids defiance to our long
winter nights. The Siemens electric railway is destined to rule in
cities and tunnels. The Siemens electric furnace, melting three pounds
of platinum in twenty minutes, was the wonder of the Paris Exposition,
which might well have been called an exposition of Siemens apparatus
and productions, so prominent were they there.
Almost alone among all these results, his theory of the “Conservation
of Solar Energy” dealt with a question not affecting, or at least
not immediately affecting, human welfare. A great authority has
characterised this as “one of the highest and most brilliant flights
that the scientific imagination has ever made.” While astronomers
quietly accepted the conclusion that the sun is cooling down, and
will become at some distant but calculable epoch a mere cinder hung
in space, he endeavored to show that energy can no more be lost in
the solar system than it is in the laboratory or the factory. Sir
William Siemens’s theory assumed that the interplanetary spaces are
filled with an exceedingly thin or rare atmosphere of the compounds of
carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, such for example as aqueous vapor and
hydro-carbons. In this atmosphere the sun is revolving with a velocity
four times that of the earth, and hence the solar atmosphere at his
equator is thrown out to an enormous distance from his surface. One
consequence of this is a perpetual indraught, at the poles of the sun,
of the surrounding atmosphere. Thus the sun is everlastingly being fed,
and everlastingly sending out its light and heat, which thus recuperate
themselves: in this way the solar energy, which is sometimes assumed
to be lost in the empty void of interstellar space, really acts upon
the rare vapors therein, and converts the universe into a kind of vast
regenerative furnace! Had the author of this ingenious theory lived but
a few years longer, he would doubtless have labored to strengthen it
with further observations and arguments. As it is, it must remain as
a daring and original suggestion, the effort of a keen and sagacious
mind to bring to fresh subjects the experience and the knowledge
accumulated by work of quite a different kind. It is more scientific
to believe, with him, that there is some restorative and conservative
agency at work, than to suppose that the universe is gradually cooling
down into a ball of slag, were it only because his theory does not
require an effort of creation at once tremendous and futile. It leaves
us free to avoid contemplating a time when the solar system was not,
and another when it will cease to be.
Let us now take a brief glance at one or two of Sir William Siemens’s
public addresses on more general subjects. His interest in education
was so keen, and especially in that branch of education known as
technical or technological, that these addresses almost invariably
had this for their subject, and were frequently given at some public
ceremony in connection with it, such for example as distributions of
prizes. The most important of them, perhaps, was given on October 20,
1881, at the re-opening of the Midland Institute in Birmingham. He
there surprised his audience by depreciating the German polytechnic
system of colleges, on the ground that their students were wanting in
originality and adaptability to new conditions. After recounting at
some length the recent industrial applications of electricity, he said:
“My chief object in dwelling, perhaps unduly, upon these practical
questions, is to present to your minds in a concrete form the
hopelessness of looking upon any of the practical processes of the
present day as permanent, to be acquired in youth and to be the staple
occupation of a lifetime.... The practical man of former days will
have to yield his place to the unbiassed worker who with open mind is
prepared for every step forward as it arises. For this purpose it is
necessary that he should possess, beyond the mere practical knowledge
of his trade, a clear appreciation of the principles of action
underlying each operation, and such general acquaintance with the laws
of chemical and physical science as will make it easy for him to adapt
himself to the new order of things.”
He urged the prime importance of the teaching of science being
included in the curriculum of _every_ school, and of an adequate
supply of trained teachers, as well as of properly equipped
laboratories of all kinds, wherein to train them. Replying to the
proverb, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” he said: “A little
knowledge is an _excellent_ thing, only it must be understood that this
little is fundamental knowledge,” and he endorsed Lord Brougham’s pithy
saying, “Try to know something about everything, and everything about
something.”
In 1878 and 1879 he gave addresses on the same subject in Liverpool,
Tunbridge Wells, Paris, and elsewhere. In pointing out the results of
the superior French system of technical education, he urged that we
should not servilely copy it, but that we should imitate the French
example with due regard to the idiosyncrasies of our own country. He
approved the spontaneous and self-supporting nature of the English
system, as more adaptable to free and vigorous development than a
governmental system. His address to the Coventry Science Classes in
October, 1882, upon _Waste_, in which he took as examples, waste of
time, of food, of personal energy, of mechanical energy, and of fuel,
was full of wise and sound practical advice, clothed in the simplest
language.
In conclusion, let me try, with the aid of private letters and papers
which it has been my privilege to peruse, to bring before you some
of the personal characteristics of the man whose life-work we have
been considering. Of his extraordinary perseverance in overcoming
obstacles I have already spoken, and it has been well remarked
that, to a mind and body requiring almost perpetual exercise, these
difficulties supplied only a wholesome quantity of resistance. In the
two valuable qualities of tenacity and pliancy of intellect he has
perhaps never been surpassed. Suppleness and nimbleness of mind are
rarely allied with that persistent “grip,” which, without them, is not
unlikely to degenerate into obstinacy. In Sir William Siemens these
qualities were happily balanced. His talents were the admiration of his
contemporaries, and his memory will ever be respected and honored by
all, friends and rivals alike; for the facility with which he applied
his powers to the solution of the most difficult problems was equalled
by the modesty with which he presented the successful result of his
efforts. An eminent engineer said of him, “With all his great work, no
envious word was ever mixed!” At the time when he received his honorary
degree from the University of Oxford, a distinguished Oxonian wrote: “I
believe an alumnus more distinguished by great ability, and by a high
and honorable determination to use it for the good of his fellowmen,
and to help forward man’s law of existence, ‘Subdue the earth and
have dominion over it,’ never received a degree from the University
of Oxford.” Of the other distinctions heaped upon him, it was often
said that the Society rather than Dr. Siemens was honored; and when
he was knighted, a well-known man of science, writing to congratulate
him, said: “At the same time I feel that the ennobling of three such
men as yourself, Abel, and Playfair confers more honor on the order of
knighthood than even it does on science.”
The fame of Sir William Siemens was world-wide, as it deserved to be;
but those who knew him best will be the most ready to acknowledge that
the qualities of his heart were no less conspicuous than those of his
intellect. Hear what his pupils and assistants said of him:—“How my
dear old master will be missed, and what a gap in many walks of life
will be unfilled!” “There are many younger members of our profession
who will look elsewhere in vain for such genial uniform kindness and
sympathy as his invariably was.”“The seven years I spent in his service
were the happiest in my life.” “It was the loss of the kindest and best
friend I ever had, and I have not known such sorrow since the loss of
my older brother. The keenest incentive I had in my new work was the
desire of showing him that his kindly recommendation was justified by
the event.”In acknowledging the gift from Lady Siemens of some objects
of remembrance, one writes: “They, as visible objects on which his
eyes must have rested frequently, will, I feel certain, when I shall
look at them, tend to encourage me in overcoming difficulties, of which
there exist always plenty for those who wish to contribute their share,
however small, to the progress of things of this world. It is this
example which Sir William Siemens has given to all the world, which
will, I believe, be the most beneficial for future generations, and for
those who are wise enough to follow it.”
Of his character as a man of business let Messrs. Chance Bros. speak,
as one testimony out of many: “Our firm having been the first to carry
out in England on a large scale the Siemens regenerative process, we
were brought into close and frequent communication with him, and had
the opportunity of appreciating not only his extraordinary inventive
powers, but also his thorough straightforwardness and integrity of
character.”
I have spoken of his interest in education, and I quote two opinions
thereon. Lord Sherbrooke, in conversation with a mutual friend,
regretted immensely that he had not been a pupil of Sir W. Siemens, and
spoke of him, and of those who were working with him to enlarge our
sphere of knowledge, as the salt of the earth. A distinguished American
expressed himself as strongly impressed not only with a sense of his
great learning, but with admiration of the native strength of his mind,
and the soundness of his educational views.
Many testified to his great benevolence. The German Athenæum wrote: “If
the world of science has lost in your late husband one of its brightest
stars, the poor, the striving student, as well as the struggling
artist, have lost a liberal benefactor and a patron; and on hearing of
his sad and but too early death, many will have exclaimed, ‘We ne’er
shall look upon his like again!’” An eminent man spoke of him as one
“whose life has been spent in an unselfish and unceasing devotion to
God’s creatures.” Many of the letters which I have read convey the
thoughts of some of his friends on hearing of his death, in language
such as this: “We all felt struck down; realising how much poorer his
loss had left the world, leaving us as he did when full of the vigor
of his endless interests, and brightening all around him, not only by
his genius and high intellect, but by his marvellous benevolence and
tender consideration, so full was he of kind feeling and thought for
others. He was in a high degree the possessor of those sweet domestic
virtues which, while so simple and unostentatious, were so spontaneous
and charming. What an eminently well-rounded life was his! Our children
will always remember how he was held up to them as a man almost without
an equal.” A confidential servant, who had lived in his family many
years, wrote of him as the most Christ-like man she had ever met; and
that he always reminded her of the Arab prince who asked the recording
angel, when writing in his book the names of those who loved the Lord,
to write him as one who loved his fellowmen; the angel wrote and
carried the book to heaven, bringing it back again to show; and when
the prince looked, lo, his name led all the rest!
Of his family relations, the Rev. Mr. Haweis thus wrote, in a sermon
on “Friends!” “What a beautiful sight, too, was the friendship of the
late Sir William Siemens for his brothers, and theirs for him! not
less beautiful because lived out unconsciously in the full glare and
publicity of the commercial world, into which questions of amity are
not supposed to enter, especially when they interfere with business.
But here were several brothers, each with his large firm, his
inventions, his speculations, yet each at the other’s disposal; never
eager to claim his own, never a rival! These men were often separated
by time and space, but they were one in heart.”
One who had exceptional opportunities of knowing him wrote: “His
characteristic of intensity in whatever he was engaged in was
remarkable. Even in his relaxations he entered into them with his
whole heart; indeed, it did one good to hear his ringing laugh when
witnessing some amusing play—the face lit up with well-nigh childlike
pleasure—no trace of the weariness which had been visible after
a long day of work of such varied kinds, all demanding his most
serious attention, involving often momentous world-wide results. As a
travelling companion he was indeed the light and happiness of those
who had the privilege to be with him. Everything that could lessen
fatigue, or add to the enjoyment and interest of the journey, was
thought of, and tenderly carried out, and the knowledge of the pleasure
he was giving was his sweet reward. Young people and children clustered
round him, and he spared no trouble to explain simply and clearly any
question they asked him.”
The Rev. D. Fraser, in a funeral address, said: “The combination of
mental power with moral uprightness and strength is always impressive.
And this is what signally characterised him whose death we mourn. There
have been very few more active and inquiring minds in this generation:
the keenness and swiftness of his intellectual processes were even more
surprising than the extent and variety of his scientific attainments.
But such powers and such acquirements have, alas! been sometimes in
unworthy alliance with jealous dispositions and a low moral tone. What
will endear to us the memory of William Siemens is that he was, while
so able and skilful, also so modest, so upright, so generous, and so
totally free from all narrowness and paltriness of spirit. And God,
whose wisdom and power he reverently owned, has taken him from us!”
Yes, God has taken him from us to a deeper insight into, and a greater
work amongst and beyond, those works of His which he so loved and
studied here. Can we imagine a greater fulness of joy than that
which must now be his in the vast increase of his knowledge, and the
satisfying of every wish of the great warm heart and noble nature
which was so plainly but the beginning of better things? How can we
doubt that for a nature so richly endowed there is higher scope alike
for knowledge and for service in the great Eternity? Such beauty
and grandeur and energy and power cannot be laid low—they are not
destroyed, nothing is lost, but all will live again in ever-growing
splendor! A noble, beautiful, and gifted spirit has passed to the
higher and fuller life, and with us is left an influence for good which
cannot die. Just as this generation is now profiting by the solar
radiation which fell on the earth countless ages ago, so will the
labors of Charles William Siemens form a store of knowledge, potential
with respect to this and succeeding generations, and destined to confer
advantages, greater than we can now estimate, on the ever-advancing
cause of science, and on the moral, intellectual, and material progress
of humanity!—_Gentleman’s Magazine._