NA TURE 



25 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1893. 



DR. WERNER VON SIEMENS. 



Personal Recollections of Werner von Siemens. Trans- 

 lated by W. C. Coupland. (Asher and Co., 1893.) 

 "IT /"ERNER VON SIEMENS was a representative 

 VV man of this nineteenth century, the century in 

 which " the art of directing the great sources of power 

 in nature for the use and convenience of man " has been 

 more studied and applied than in any other, we were 

 almost saying than in all others. And no other century 

 has produced quite such a man^a man in whom the 

 ability to apprehend the secrets of nature was united 

 with the ability to apply them to industrial purposes. Many 

 circumstances combined to favour him, both of a per- 

 sonal and public character. His father was evidently a 

 man of strong common sense ; his mother was refined in 

 her tastes, cultured in her mind, and devoted to her 

 children. The children were fortunate in having such 

 parents to guide and watch over them. At that time, as 

 now, first-rate schools and colleges existed throughout 

 what now forms the German Empire, and in these a 

 good mathematical and scientific education was to be 

 obtained, which was taken advantage of by the 

 Siemenses, both as boys and young men. Another 

 matter which was specially favourable to Werner 

 Siemens was his military training ; regular drill, strict 

 discipline, endurance, and implicit obedience, learnt and 

 practised in his own person, helped to make a man of 

 him. Besides this, these young men were born just at 

 the right time, if we may say so, to take advantage of 

 the recent discoveries in, and formulation of the prin- 

 ciples of, the natural sciences of heat and electricity and 

 magnetism. These sciences were at that period in the 

 active, nascent state. Galvani and Volta, Gauss and 

 Weber, Oersted and Faraday had set the world wonder- 

 ing, and themselves, the philosophers, thinking, analys- 

 ing, and systematising, and the men of imaginative 

 minds, the poets of industry, inventing. Great dis- 

 coveries had been made in former days, but these were 

 in the realms of the Cosmos ; they were not suitable for 

 application to the daily uses of men, and were not, as 

 those were, startling and impressive. 



One of the first applications of electricity was to 

 electro-plating, the covering of the baser metals with a 

 •thin layer — almost a film — of the nobler metals. And 

 when in 1842 Werner Siemens applied for and obtained 

 a Prussian patent, no process of galvanic gilding or 

 silvering was known in Germany. He tells us that he 

 ■ had experimented with all the gold and silver salts known 

 to him, and besides the hyposulphites had also found 

 the cyanides suitable. The use of the latter had been 

 made and patented by the Messrs. Elkington of Bir- 

 mingham, so that a patent was only granted to Werner 

 Siemens for the former. His brother William was 

 despatched to England, where he took out a patent 

 which he succeeded in selling to the Messrs. Elkington 

 for ^1500, and this money helped the young men on 

 their road to independence and fame. 



Whether it is that the minds of those engaged on the 

 problems connected with the application of the forces of 

 NO. 1254, VOL 49] 



nature to industrial purposes are necessarily turned 

 towards the measurement and regulation of thess forces, 

 we would not say, but meters and governors seem to 

 have a special fascination for them. And so it was with 

 these men. The problem of the regulation of the steam- 

 engine seems to have proposed itself to the mind of 

 William ; both brothers, however, were engaged in its 

 solution, and the differential regulator or chronometric 

 governor was the result. 



In the work we are reviewing there are few dates, but 

 fortunately Dr. Pole's " Life of Sir William Siemens, ' 

 and the scientific ""and technical papers of the brothers 

 themselves, already published by Mr.John Murray, supply 

 these. Quoting then from a paper by C. William Siemens 

 on the progress of the electric telegraph, we find that 

 "in the year 1845, when the practical utility of electric 

 telegraphs had been demonstrated in England, several 

 continental governments had determined upon their 

 establishment."' A Royal commission was appointed 

 in Prussia, of which Dr. Werner was the most active 

 member. They favoured an underground system, and 

 charged him to institute experiments. 



Here we stand on the threshold leading to, and 

 opening up on, one of the greatest achievements of modern 

 days. The underground system was only a stepping- 

 stone to submarine telegraphy, and was not in itself a 

 permanent although a temporary success. But there in 

 Germany just at this time something was wanted, and 

 here in England it existed ; and these two brothers — 

 the elder there, the younger here — were the means of 

 completing the circuit. In the winter of 1844-45, "I 

 recollect well seeing the first specimen of gutta-percha 

 exhibited at the Society of Arts, I think by Mr. Mont- 

 gomerie. . . . He was kind enough to give me a piece, 

 which I forwarded to my brother, Dr. Werner Siemens. 

 . . . I sent him this piece of gutta-percha in order that 

 he might try whether it was not superior to india-rubber 

 for insulation purposes. He did so, and after some time, 

 having procured for him at his request a further supply, 

 he made experiments, and in the course of about twelve 

 months he proposed to the Prussian Government the use 

 of gutta-percha for insulating telegraphic land wire." 

 Dr. Werner constructed a screw press, by which the 

 heated gutta-percha was cohesively pressed round the 

 copper wire under the application of high pressure ; this 

 was well insulated, and permanently retained its insula- 

 tion. And so, just at the time that it was wanted, a 

 substance hitherto unknown came to light ! 



In the summer of 1847 the first long subterranean 

 wire from Berlin to Grossbeeren was laid, and the tele- 

 graph commission had under^consideration the employ- 

 ment " both of the wires coated with gutta-percha by 

 pressing,' and also of my dial and printing telegraph in 

 the telegraph system about to be introduced into Prussia." 

 On October 12, 1847, the factory of Siemens and Halske 

 was started, but Dr. Werner still retained his military 

 cpmmission. In June, 1849, he requested his discharge 

 from the military service, and soon after also resigned 

 his office as technical manager of the Prussian State 

 telegraphs. 



We are not attempting in any detail to survey the 

 whole field of Dr. Werner von Siemens's activity ; we are 



C 



