344 PROGRESS OP THE LONDON FIRM SINCE 1864. 



How splendidly the London house, now named 

 "Siemens Brothers", prospered in the immediately 

 following period has been described at length in the 

 above-mentioned book of Dr. Pole on my brother 

 William. I therefore confine myself here to some 

 remarks on my own and my brother Charles's personal 

 cooperation. 



When in the year 1869 Charles transferred his 

 residence to London, the factory at Charlton was 

 already in full work as a mechanical workshop for the 

 construction of electric apparatus of every kind; a cable- 

 sheathing shop was also combined with it, in which 

 important cables had already been manufactured. The 

 principle employed by me in the testings of the English 

 Government cables, that the permanence of a cable 

 could only be assured, if it were tested at all stages 

 of its manufacture with scientific thoroughness and 

 accuracy, had borne good fruit , and the system of 

 cable testings, then elaborated, has answered admirably 

 well in the sequel. 



The remarkable success of the Malta -Alexandria 

 line, which we tested according to this system for the 

 English Government, had considerably raised our tech- 

 nical reputation in England, and perhaps for this reason 

 the only factory in England, which then turned out 

 wires coated with seamless gutta-percha according to my 

 method, threw difficulties in the way of supplying the 

 purified gutta-percha which we ordered from it. We 

 accordingly resolved to establish our own gutta-percha 

 factory, and accomplished this with complete success. 



