iv 



its behalf during the last three years of his life may yet we hope have 

 fall effect. Jast as those other wasteful modes of using heat yielded, 

 as we shall see later, to Siemens' inventive genius persistently applied, 

 BO also, had he been spared to us, would this particular mode have 

 had to yield in time. 



Just nine days before his death, the writer of this notice had 

 received a letter from Sir William Siemens, saying nothing of illness, 

 but full of plans for the immediate future : chiefly an address to the 

 Society of Arts, and the realisation at Sherwood of his method for the 

 smokeless supply of heat to a steam-boiler, by the combustion of 

 hydrogen, carburetted hydrogen, and carbonic oxide, obtained from 

 the conversion into these gases of the whole combustible material of 

 the coal, together with some hydrogen and oxygen from water, and 

 oxygen from air, in his gas-producing kiln. " The producer will be 

 in full operation at Sherwood by that time," were almost the last 

 words received by the writer from his friend, kindly inviting him to 

 come and see the new method in operation at the end of the current 

 month. A short time before, in travelling home from Vienna, where 

 they had been associated in the British Commission for the Electrical 

 Exhibition, Sir William Siemens had told the writer that without 

 waiting for a perfected gas-engine to ose the products of combustion 

 as direct motive agent, and so give the very highest attainable 

 economy, he expected by using the gas from his producer as fuel for 

 the fire of a steam-boiler, even on a comparatively small scale, like 

 that of his appliances at Sherwood for electric lighting and the 

 electric transmission of power, to be able to obtain better economy of 

 coal for motive power than by burning the coal directly in the usual 

 manner in a furnace under the boiler. And further, what is especially 

 interesting to persons planning isolated installations for electric light, 

 that he (Siemens) believed that the labour of tending the producer 

 and boiler and steam-engine, would be on the whole considerably less 

 than that which is required on the ordinary plan, with its incessant 

 stoking of coal into the furnace under the boiler, as long as steam is 

 to be kept up. There is something inexpressibly sad, even in respect 

 to a comparatively small matter like this, to see the active prosecution 

 of an experiment so full of interest and so near to a practical solution 

 suddenly cut short by death. 



In 1857 William Siemens, in conjunction with his younger brother 

 and pupil, Frederick, commenced investigations with a view to using 

 the principle of " regeneration " in the process of metallurgy. The 

 result of their labours, in which it may be observed the elder brother 

 had the greater share, was the regenerative gas furnace, certainly the 

 most valuable and important of the many products of their genius 

 which the Siemenses have given to the world. It was first practically 

 applied, in 1861, within the works of the Messrs. Chance, of 



