Carl Wilhelm Siemens

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Sir Charles William Siemens
Ernst Werner von Siemens
  • Carl Heinrich von Siemens
  • Alexander Siemens
    • Awards
    (1862)

    Sir Carl Wilhelm Siemens

    FRSA
    (4 April 1823 – 19 November 1883), anglicised to Charles William Siemens, was a German-British electrical engineer and businessman.

    Biography

    Siemens was born in the village of Lenthe, today part of

    Ernst Werner Siemens, the fourth child, became a famous electrician and was associated with William in many of his inventions. He was also the brother of Carl Heinrich von Siemens and a cousin of Alexander Siemens
    .

    On 23 July 1859, Siemens was married at St James's,

    Writer to the Signet, Edinburgh, and sister of Mr Lewis Gordon, Professor of Engineering in the University of Glasgow—and became a naturalised British citizen. He used to say that on 19 March of that year he took oath and allegiance to two ladies in one day—to The Queen and to his betrothed. He was knighted—becoming Sir William—a few months before his death. He died on the evening of Monday 19 November 1883 and was buried one week later in Kensal Green Cemetery, London.[1] A glass window installed in Westminster Abbey in his honour commemorated him. Lady Siemens died in 1902.[2]

    The early years

    In the autumn of 1838 when William was fifteen years old, he began his studies to become an engineer. He attended a highly respected School of Trade and Commerce, the Gewerbe-Schule Magdeburg. William had a particularly close relationship with his eldest brother;

    Ernst Werner Siemens
    had decided to teach William mathematics so that he could learn English at school instead. This programme helped them both and William's knowledge of English proved an incalculable advantage to them both. He went on to pass his examination easily. Less than a year later, their mother died and their father soon afterwards in 1840.

    Once William had completed his course at the Magdeburg school he went on to the University of Göttingen where he attended lectures on physical geography and technology, high mathematics, theoretical chemistry and practical chemistry and physics. He was also able for a short time to work with Wilhelm Weber, the renowned scientist and inventor, in his Magnetic Observatory.

    William was nearly nineteen when he left university to become an apprentice engineer. He also found time for more artistic pursuits such as taking dancing lessons and even painting a landscape of Nordhausen for the wife of the factory manager. His progress in the engineering factory was so rapid that his two-year apprenticeship was cut down to one.

    Due to the education of the younger members of the family becoming a financial worry, on 10 March 1843, Carl Wilhelm Siemens left for London. He was acting as an agent for his brother Werner, and he hoped to earn enough money by selling a patent in England to help support and educate his many brothers and sisters. He felt a keen desire to see England and the journey cost him £1. William had already shown himself to be an enthusiastic businessman, having financed his trip by selling an invention of his brother's, an improvement to the gold and silver plating process, to George Richards Elkington. He was well aware, as he wrote to Werner, that his visit might achieve nothing, but if all went well he intended to remain. This indeed proved to be the case.

    Career

    Siemens had been trained as a mechanical engineer, and his most important work at this early stage was non-electrical; the greatest achievement of his life, the

    John Hick, of Bolton, an engine of four horse-power, having a condenser provided with regenerators, and using 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 attended with many practical difficulties, and the invention was not entirely successful; nevertheless, the Society of Arts, in 1850, acknowledged the value of the principle, by awarding Siemens a gold medal for his regenerative condenser.

    In 1850 he established the London sales office of

    St Petersburg, Russia. By 1863, Sir William had his own cable factory built at Charlton, London. In 1867, Siemens completed the monumental Indo-European (Calcutta to London) telegraph line.[3]

    In 1859 William Siemens 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 (at Charlton, SE London) has been remarkable. In 1872 Sir William Siemens became the first President of the Society of Telegraph Engineers which became the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the forerunner of the Institution of Engineering and Technology [1]

    The 4-cylinder experimental gas engine subject of Siemens patent (image taken from Theory of the Gas Engine by Dugald Clerk in 1882)

    In 1860 William Siemens constructed a remarkable gas engine (the same year the very first commercial engine was produced by Lenoir). It didn't get beyond the experimental stage, though its principle of operation (described in Siemens British patent 2074 of 1860, and by Siemens in The Theory of the Gas Engine[4]) appears to be similar to the commercially successful Brayton engine of 1872. In the discussion section of The Theory of the Gas Engine Siemens discloses that :
    "The engine promised to give very good results, but about the same time he began to give his attention to the production of intense heat in furnaces, and having to make his choice between the two subjects, he selected the furnace and the metallurgic process leading out of it; and that was why the engine had remained where it was for so long a time."

    Siemens was also responsible for the hot tube ignition system used on many of the early gas engines.[5]

    In June 1862 he was elected a

    Bakerian Lecture
    .

    As a member of the circumnavigation committee preparing the oceanographic expedition of HMS Challenger, Siemens was commissioned in 1871 to develop an electric thermometer to measure the temperature of the ocean at different depths.[7]

    He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1877.[8]

    The

    Siemens-Martin process. 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. Siemens pursued two major themes in his inventive efforts, 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.

    CS Faraday

    In 1874 he had a special

    cable ship built, according to his design, for Siemens Brothers, the CS Faraday. In 1881, a Siemens AC Alternator driven by a watermill was used to power the world's first electric street lighting in the town of Godalming
    , United Kingdom.

    See also

    References

    1. ^ Paths of Glory. Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery. 1997. p. 89.
    2. ^ "Wills". The Times. No. 36913. London. 31 October 1902. p. 10.
    3. ^ "Halfway around the world in 28 minutes – Building the Indo-European Telegraph Line". Siemens Historical Institute. Archived from the original on 5 June 2019. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
    4. ^ Dugald Clerk. The Theory of the Gas Engine, D. Van Nostrand, New York, 1882
    5. ^ Dugald Clerk, "Gas and Oil Engines", Longman Green & Co, (7th Edition) 1897, p224
    6. ^ "Library and Archive Catalogue". Royal Society. Retrieved 15 October 2010.[permanent dead link]
    7. S2CID 182882300
      .
    8. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 10 May 2021.

    Sources

    External links

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    Preceded by President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers
    1872–1873     		Succeeded by
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