38 WILLIAM'S FIRST SUCCESS IN ENGLAND. 



another process, now in general use - - viz. depositing 

 from gold arid silver cyanides - - which soon obtained 

 great success. 



In the negoeiations with regard to the Berlin 



o J~ 



plan and the fitting up of the establishment I was 

 materially assisted by my brother William, who had 

 paid me a holiday A r isit, and who succeeded at the 

 same time in inducing a Berlin engineering firm to 

 adopt the differential governor. As he clearly showed 

 talent for such negociations and himself wanted to get 

 to know England, we agreed that he should try to 

 utilize my inventions in that country and for this 

 purpose obtain a longer leave of absence from his 

 factory. Considerable means I could certainly not afford 

 him for his journey, and I have often wondered how 

 in spite of this he attained his end. With excellent 

 judgment he went straight to our competitor Elkington. 

 who at first cut him short with the remark that 

 we had no right to use our process in England . as 

 his patent gave him the exclusive right to employ 

 electric currents, produced by electric batteries or 

 by induction, for depositing gold and silver. William 

 had sufficient presence of mind to reply that we 

 employed thermo-electric currents, therefore did not 

 infringe his patent. 1 did in fact at once succeed in 

 making a thermo-electric battery, consisting of pairs 

 of bars of iron arid German silver, with which we 

 could very well precipitate gold and silver from hypo- 

 sulphite solutions. As a consequence William succeeded 

 in selling our English patent to Elkington for 1 500. 



