

CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS, whose untimely death on November 19, 

 1883, we have to record, was born at Lenthe, in Hanover, on the 

 4th April, 1823. 



His education was begun at the Gymnasium of Liibeck, from which 

 he passed to the Polytechnic School of Magdeburg, and finished 

 at the University of Gottingen. During his University course he 

 had the advantage of studying the natural sciences under Professors 

 Wohler and C. Himly, from the latter of whom the Siemenses re- 

 ceived the first impulse towards those investigations which led to 

 their first invention the electro-gilding process. 



Leaving the University in 1842, at the age of nineteen, "William 

 Siemens entered upon the practical business of life by spending a 

 year as pupil in the engine works of Count Stolberg, thus adopting 

 the profession of engineer, in which in after years he attained such 

 commanding eminence. It is interesting to observe that, at the very 

 outset of his career, he showed how wide and all-embracing was his 

 understanding of the word engineer, and of what an engineer should 

 be. To his mind the word meant the practical development of the 

 results of science, in order to minister to the wants and comforts 

 of mankind ; and he considered that an engineer must be able, if not 

 himself an original investigator, at least to appreciate fully the con- 

 quests of science in the realm of Nature, and from his knowledge of 

 ways and means to adapt the results so gained from time to time to 

 the needs of life. His career shows how completely William Siemens 

 realised this idea, and not only so, but establishes for him strong 

 claims to rank as an able worker in the domain of pure science. 



In 1843, when he was only twenty years old, William Siemens 

 came to England to realise a joint invention of his own and his 

 brother Werner in electro-gilding ; and, persevering through the 

 complication of difficulties naturally met with, by a young man in 

 a strange land, with little knowledge of its language, he succeeded in 

 proving the usefulness of the invention, and getting it carried into 

 practical effect through tne wise and kindly appreciation of Mr. 

 Elkington. Encouraged by this success, William Siemens returned 

 a year later with his chronometric governor an invention of remark- 

 able beauty and ingenuity, in which, by the motion of a pivoted 

 framework carrying an idle wheel geared to bevel wheels on two 

 shafts in line, or geared to the outer and inner circumferences of 

 concentric wheels, rotating in opposite directions on coaxial shafts, 

 the movement of one wheel is caused to keep time with that of the 

 other. We believe that, although the invention was not a com- 

 mercial success, and is not generally known in this country as prac- 

 tically realised except in its application to regulate the motions of 



b 



