Nov. 29, 18S3] 



NATURE 



99 



In private life Sir William Siemens, with his lively 

 bright intelligence always present and eager to give 

 pleasure and benefit to those aroimd him, was a most 

 lovable man, singularly unselfish and full of kind thought 

 and care for others. The writer of the present article has 

 for nearly a quarter of a century had the happiness of 

 personal friendship with him. The occasions of meeting 

 him, more frequent of late years, and more and more 

 frequent to the very end, are among the happiest of re- 

 collections. The thought that they can now live only in 

 memory is too full of grief to find expression in words. 

 William Thomson 



In addition to the above notice by a master-hand we 

 give the following details of Sir William Siemena's life 

 and of the sad and solemn closing scene. 



Charles William Siemens was born at Lenthe, 

 in Hanover, on April 4, 1823 ; he was educated at 

 Liibeck, the Polytechnic School of Magdeburg, and had 

 the advantage of sitting for a couple of sessions under 

 Professors Wohler and Himly at the Univerity of 

 Gdttingen, finishing his academical career at the age of 

 nineteen. He staxed one year at the engine works of 

 Count Stolberg, and when twenty years of age landed in 

 England to introduce a new process of electro deposition, 

 and, as stated above, was so successful that he made 

 England his home. Another early invention of the two 

 brothers was one which Faraday lectured upon at the 

 Royal Institution one Friday evening under the title of 

 the " Anastatic Printing Process of the Brothers Siemens." 



Between his twentieth and thirtieth years he was 

 mainly engaged in problems connected with mechanical 

 engineering, improving the chronometric governor, bring- 

 ing out a double-cylinder air-pump and a simple water- 

 meter which has been extensively used both in this country 

 and on the Continent. When twenty-four years of age he 

 constructed a four horse-power steam-engine, with regene- 

 rative condensers, in the factory of Mr. John Hicks, of 

 Bolton, and the Society of Arts acknowledged the value 

 of the principle by giving him their gold medal in 

 1850. At this time also he made a modification 

 of Grove's secondary battery, to which he referred two 

 years ago at the Jubilee Meeting of the British Asso- 

 ciation. When just over thirty years of age he re- 

 ceived the Telford prize and premium of the Insti- 

 tution of Mechanical Engineers for his paper " On 

 the Conversion of Heat into Mechanical Effect," in 

 which he defined a perfect engine as one in which all the 

 heat applied to the elastic medium was consumed in its 

 expansion behind a working piston, leaving no portion to 

 be thrown into a condenser or into the atmosphere, and 

 advised that expansion should be carried to the utmost 

 possible limit. In taking up the question of heat he 

 adopted the dynamical theory as the result of a study of 

 the works of Joule, Mayer, and others, and we find him 

 when thirty-two years of age exhibiting two steam-engines 

 with regenerative condensers, the one of twenty and the 

 other of seven horse-power at the Paris Exhibition of 

 1S55. 



Between his thirtieth and fortieth years he read seve- 

 ral papers before the Institution of Civil Engineers on 

 electrical subjects, and before the Institution of Mechani- 

 cal Engineers upon the various inventions which he had 

 already brought out. During this period also was esta- 

 blished the firm of Siemens Brothers, which has become 

 so famous for their machines, and submarine and land 

 lines, four Transatlantic cables, the Indo-European line, 

 the North China cable, the Platino-Braziliera cable, and 

 others. In 1S60, when engaged in superintending the 

 electrical examination of the Malta and Alexandria tele- 

 graph cable, he thought of using the increased resistance 

 of metallic conductors due to rise of temperature as a 

 means for measuring temperature, and brought out next 

 year a pyrometer based upon this principle. 



He was noiv also engaged with his brother, Mr. 

 Frederick Siemens, upon that invention with which his 

 name has since been mainly connected — the regenerative 

 gas furnace. By means of this furnace, which is now used 

 all over the world, two evils which formerly appertained 

 to heat furnaces are cured, viz. the discharge of the 

 products of combustion at a very high temperature and 

 in an incompletely combined state. Another advantage 

 of this furnace is the very high temperature that could 

 be attained by its use, and from the very first its author 

 looked upon it as capable of accomplishing what Reau- 

 mur, and after him Heath, had proposed, namely, to 

 produce steel on the open hearth. It was in 1863 that 

 Mr. Charles Atwood made the first attempt to pro- 

 duce steel in this manner at Tow Law under a 

 license from Mr. Siemens ; but, though partially suc- 

 cessful, it was afterwards abandoned; after one or 

 two other disappointments, Mr. .Siemens had to take the 

 matter into his own hands, and having matured the pro- 

 cess at his experimental works at Birmingham, he laid 

 the foundation of an industry which now employs thou- 

 sands of workmen at the works of the Landore Company, 

 Vickers and Co. of Sheffield, the Steel Company of Scot- 

 land, and others, about half a million tons of mild steel 

 having been produced last year in Great Britain alone. 

 This steel is now used almost exclusively in Her Majesty's 

 dockyards in the construction of the boilers and hulls 

 of ships, and its use in private yards is extending 

 rapidly. 



On February 14, 1S67, he brought before the 

 Royal Society the paper on the conversion of dynami- 

 cal into electrical force referred to by Sir William 

 Thomson. 



Not only to these large applications of electricity did 

 Sir William Siemens direct his attention but to electro- 

 metallurgy and horticulture. Those who were present at 

 his lecture to the Royal Institution on March 12, 1880, 

 will remember the stream of light which poured forth from 

 his electric furnace when the lid was taken off the crucible 

 to pour the fused steel into the mould, and the result of 

 his experiments on the influence of electric light upon 

 plant growth in the e.xhibition of peas, roses, lilies, and 

 strawberries at this early season with the fruit partially 

 developed. But the space at our disposal will only allow 

 us to remind our readers of others of his inventions, his 

 bathometer for measuring the depth of the sea, and his 

 attraction meter {Phil. Trans., 1876) ; the selenium eye, 

 which was sensitive to variation of colour ; the regenera- 



