SKETCH OF WERNER VON SIEMENS. 833 



experiments lie was making at this time with friction fuses ended 

 in an explosion, by which his hearing was permanently injured. 



While Siemens was stationed, in 1840, at Wittenberg, he he- 

 came interested in the discovery, then recently made by Jacobi, of 

 the precipitation of metallic copper from the sulphate by means 

 of the galvanic current. He repeated the experiments success- 

 fully, and applied the process — so far as his means would permit 

 — to other metals. His studies were interrupted by his arrest and 

 imprisonment for connection as second with a duel between two 

 of his brother-officers. Not relishing the idea of spending an 

 indefinite period in idleness, he managed on his way to the cita- 

 del to make arrangements to have the materials required in his 

 electroplating researches smuggled in to him. He set up a small 

 laboratory in his cell and made himself contented there. Recol- 

 lecting, from experiments he had made in the Daguerrean process, 

 that hyposulphite of soda would dissolve the insoluble salts of 

 gold and silver, he applied the principle to electrolysis with as- 

 tonishing success ; and he believes, he says, that it was one of the 

 greatest joys of his life when a newly silvered teaspoon which 

 he had immersed at the zinc pole of a Daniell cell into a cup filled 

 with a hyposulphite gold solution, while the copper pole was con- 

 nected with a louis d'or as an anode, " was converted in a few 

 minutes into a gilded spoon of the most beautiful, purest golden 

 luster." Galvano-plating was then new in Germany, and his dis- 

 covery made much talk. A jeweler of Magdeburg, visiting him 

 in prison to examine into its merits, he sold him the right to use 

 it for forty louis, and thus obtained means for continuing his 

 experiments. He counted upon enjoying still several months of 

 captivity, and the unmolested prosecution of his researches, when 

 the unwelcome message came to him of a royal pardon, and he 

 was obliged to leave the citadel at once, without house or other 

 spot in which to set up his apparatus. He asked leave from the 

 commandant to stay a little longer, but was denied, accused of 

 being ungrateful for the royal clemency, and was hurried out of 

 his quarters at midnight. He had gained by his experimenting 

 the reputation of not being well qualified for practical work, and 

 was assigned to the fireworks factory at Spandau. He had great 

 success in making pieces of unexampled brilliancy for the birth- 

 day celebration of the Emperor of Russia, and was invited to com- 

 pete in a sailboat race with Prince Frederick Karl — and beat him. 

 Then he was ordered to Berlin, to serve in the artillery arsenal ; 

 to his great delight — for this commission would give him time 

 and opportunity for carrying on his researches. 



Wilhelm Siemens having completed his studies and con- 

 structed a steam engine, Werner furnished it with a differential 

 regulator. He made a profitable contract with a silver-ware 

 vol. xLni. — 60 



