Heroes of the Telegraph

rdinand Siemens, was 'Domanen-pachter,' and farmed an estate belonging to the Crown. His mother was Eleonore Deichmann, a lady of noble disposition, a

he 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 ther

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 wo

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 18

r, 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 spir

hought 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 o

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

ason, 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

ful, 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

ined 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 sc

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 we

r 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

egenerators, 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 commun

en very widely used, not only in this country, but abroad. It acts equally well

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

s 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

net, Edinburgh, and brother to Mr. Lewis Gordon, Professor of Engineering in the University of Glasgow, He used to say that on March 19

erative gas furnace, originally invented in 1848 by his brother Friedrich, was perfected and introduced by him during many succ

. 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

l 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 experimen

abroad, it proved exceedingly remunerative. Extensive works for the application of the process were erected at Landore, where Siemens prosecuted his experiments on the

he 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

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 c

res 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-allo

NGINEERS (Vol. I., p. 123, and Vol. III., p. 297), included a set of curves graphically represe

s 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-coupli

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

er 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

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

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

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

uffered 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

t 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 cons

rer 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 e

produce a great variety of electrical instruments for measuring and other auxiliary purposes,

e 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 d

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 b

res 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

pace, 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

ry 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 Inst

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 affec

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 connectio

epresentatives 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 b

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 tempera

ociation 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 m

cease he had become our leading authority upon applied science. In electricity he was a pioneer of the new advances,

oblem 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 es

ce was usually serene and tranquil, as that of a thinker rather than a man of action; his demeanour was cool and co

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