156 THE ADDRESSES, LECTURES, ETC., OF 



Mr. Coyte, in that case, may be looked upon as another of those 

 pseudo-improvers of the regenerative gas furnace whose names 

 have been brought a good deal under public notice latterly, and 

 who, without exception, obtained their information from my office, 

 either as draughtsmen formerly employed there, or as licensees. 

 Some of them have used a modification of the arrangements 

 described in my patents of 1857 and 1861, whilst it is curious to 

 observe that the construction adopted by the others is identical 

 with an early variety of the regenerative furnace, in which the 

 heat was transferred from the outgoing to the incoming currents 

 through the refractory walls of passages. This plan was tried by 

 me in 1847, and again in connection with my brother, in 1856, 

 but was abandoned in favour of the present more efficacious 

 method, in which the same regenerator surfaces serve the double 

 purpose of alternately absorbing and giving up heat. 



I have no desire to interfere with the independent action of 

 others, so long as they confine themselves to setting forth the 

 merits of their particular arrangements without thinking it incum- 

 bent upon them to disparage what is more generally accepted as 

 the Siemens furnace, and upon which I am quite content to stake 

 my reputation. 



I shall be obliged if you will give a place to this letter, and the 

 inclosure from Messrs. Nettlefolds in your next publication. 



C. WILLIAM SIEMENS. 



12, QUBEN ANNE'S GATE, S.W., May 23rd, 1877. 



[COPY]. 



BIRMINGHAM, May 17th, 1877. 



DR. C. WM. SIEMENS, F.R.S., London. 



DEAR SIR, Your letter and telegram addressed to the works 

 have been forwarded to us. In reply we beg to say that Mr. 

 Arthur Coyte evidently knows nothing about our works. He 

 begins by calling them Nettlefold and Chamberlain, whereas no 

 Chamberlain has been connected with the works for nearly three 

 years. 



