Sir Carl Wilhelm Siemens (4 April 1823 – 19 November 1883), anglicised to Charles William Siemens, was a German-British electrical engineer and businessman.
Biography
Siemens was born in the village of Lenthe, today part of
Gehrden
Gehrden is a town in the district of Hanover, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approximately southwest of Hanover.
Notable people
* Werner von Siemens (1816-1892), inventor, founder of electrical engineering and industrialist
* Ca ...
, near
Hanover
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...
where his father, Christian Ferdinand Siemens (31 July 1787 – 16 January 1840), a tenant farmer, farmed an estate belonging to the Crown. The
Siemens family
''Siemens'' is the name of a family of German technology and telecommunications industrialists, founders and to the present day largest shareholders of Siemens AG. The family have a wealth of over €8 billion, making them the 5th richest family in ...
is an old family of
Goslar
Goslar (; Eastphalian: ''Goslär'') is a historic town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the administrative centre of the district of Goslar and located on the northwestern slopes of the Harz mountain range. The Old Town of Goslar and the Mines ...
which has been documented since 1384. His mother was Eleonore Deichmann (1792–8 July 1839), and William, or Carl Wilhelm, was the fourth son of a family of fourteen children. Of his siblings,
Ernst Werner Siemens, the fourth child, became a famous electrician and was associated with William in many of his inventions. He was also the brother of
Carl Heinrich von Siemens
Carl Heinrich von Siemens (often just Carl von Siemens) (3 March 1829 – 21 March 1906) was a German entrepreneur.
He was born in Menzendorf, Mecklenburg, one of the fourteen children of a tenant farmer of the Siemens family, an old family of ...
and a cousin of
Alexander Siemens.
On 23 July 1859, Siemens was married at St James's,
Paddington
Paddington is an area within the City of Westminster, in Central London. First a medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Three important landmarks of the district are Paddi ...
, to Anne Gordon—the youngest daughter of Mr Joseph Gordon,
Writer to the Signet
The Society of Writers to His Majesty's Signet is a private society of Scottish solicitors, dating back to 1594 and part of the College of Justice. Writers to the Signet originally had special privileges in relation to the drawing up of document ...
, Edinburgh, and sister of
Mr Lewis Gordon, Professor of Engineering in the
University of Glasgow
, image = UofG Coat of Arms.png
, image_size = 150px
, caption = Coat of arms
Flag
, latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis
, motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita
, ...
—and became a naturalised British citizen. He used to say that on 19 March of that year he took oath and allegiance to two ladies in one day—to
The Queen
In the English-speaking world, The Queen most commonly refers to:
* Elizabeth II (1926–2022), Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 1952 until her death
The Queen may also refer to:
* Camilla, Queen Consort (born 1947), ...
and to his betrothed. He was
knight
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...
ed—becoming Sir William—a few months before his death. He died on the evening of Monday 19 November 1883 and was buried one week later in
Kensal Green Cemetery
Kensal Green Cemetery is a cemetery in the Kensal Green area of Queens Park in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London, England. Inspired by Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, it was founded by the barrister George Frederick ...
, London.
A glass window installed in
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...
in his honour commemorated him. Lady Siemens died in 1902.
The early years
In the autumn of 1838 when William was fifteen years old, he began his studies to become an engineer. He attended a highly respected School of Trade and Commerce, the ''Gewerbe-Schule Magdeburg''. William had a particularly close relationship with his eldest brother;
Ernst Werner Siemens had decided to teach William mathematics so that he could learn English at school instead. This programme helped them both and William's knowledge of English proved an incalculable advantage to them both. He went on to pass his examination easily. Less than a year later, their mother died and their father soon afterwards in 1840.
Once William had completed his course at the
Magdeburg
Magdeburg (; nds, label=Low Saxon, Meideborg ) is the capital and second-largest city of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is situated at the Elbe river.
Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archdiocese of Magdebur ...
school he went on to the
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
where he attended lectures on physical geography and technology, high mathematics, theoretical chemistry and practical chemistry and physics. He was also able for a short time to work with
Wilhelm Weber, the renowned scientist and inventor, in his Magnetic Observatory.
William was nearly nineteen when he left university to become an apprentice engineer. He also found time for more artistic pursuits such as taking dancing lessons and even painting a landscape of
Nordhausen Nordhausen may refer to:
* Nordhausen (district), a district in Thuringia, Germany
** Nordhausen, Thuringia, a city in the district
**Nordhausen station, the railway station in the city
* Nordhouse, a commune in Alsace (German: Nordhausen)
* Narost ...
for the wife of the factory manager. His progress in the engineering factory was so rapid that his two-year apprenticeship was cut down to one.
Due to the education of the younger members of the family becoming a financial worry, on 10 March 1843, Carl Wilhelm Siemens left for London. He was acting as an agent for his brother Werner, and he hoped to earn enough money by selling a patent in England to help support and educate his many brothers and sisters. He felt a keen desire to see England and the journey cost him £1. William had already shown himself to be an enthusiastic businessman, having financed his trip by selling an invention of his brother's, an improvement to the gold and silver plating process, to
George Richards Elkington
George Richards Elkington (17 October 1801 – 22 September 1865) was a manufacturer from Birmingham, England. He patented the first commercial electroplating process.
Biography
Elkington was born in Birmingham, the son of a spectacle manuf ...
. He was well aware, as he wrote to Werner, that his visit might achieve nothing, but if all went well he intended to remain. This indeed proved to be the case.
Career
Siemens had been trained as a mechanical engineer, and his most important work at this early stage was non-electrical; the greatest achievement of his life, the
regenerative furnace. Though in 1847 he published a paper in Liebig's ''Annalen der Chemie'' on the 'Mercaptan of Selenium,' his mind was busy with the new ideas upon the nature of heat which were promulgated by
Carnot,
Clapeyron,
Joule
The joule ( , ; symbol: J) is the unit of energy in the International System of Units (SI). It is equal to the amount of work done when a force of 1 newton displaces a mass through a distance of 1 metre in the direction of the force applied ...
,
Clausius
Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius (; 2 January 1822 – 24 August 1888) was a German physicist and mathematician and is considered one of the central founding fathers of the science of thermodynamics. By his restatement of Sadi Carnot's principle ...
,
Mayer,
Thomson Thomson may refer to:
Names
* Thomson (surname), a list of people with this name and a description of its origin
* Thomson baronets, four baronetcies created for persons with the surname Thomson
Businesses and organizations
* SGS-Thomson Mic ...
, and
Rankine. He discarded the older notions of heat as a substance, and accepted it as a form of energy. Working on this new line of thought, which gave him an advantage over other inventors of his time, he made his first attempt to economise heat, by constructing, in 1847, at the factory of
John Hick
John Harwood Hick (20 January 1922 – 9 February 2012) was a philosopher of religion and theologian born in England who taught in the United States for the larger part of his career. In philosophical theology, he made contributions in the are ...
, of Bolton, an engine of four horse-power, having a condenser provided with regenerators, and using
superheated
A superheater is a device used to convert saturated steam or wet steam into superheated steam or dry steam. Superheated steam is used in steam turbines for electricity generation, steam engines, and in processes such as steam reforming. There are ...
steam.
Two years later he continued his experiments at the works of
Messrs. Fox, Henderson, and Co., of
Smethwick
Smethwick () is an industrial town in Sandwell, West Midlands, England. It lies west of Birmingham city centre. Historically it was in Staffordshire.
In 2019, the ward of Smethwick had an estimated population of 15,246, while the wider bu ...
, near
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
, who had taken the matter in hand. The use of superheated steam was attended with many practical difficulties, and the invention was not entirely successful; nevertheless, the Society of Arts, in 1850, acknowledged the value of the principle, by awarding Siemens a gold medal for his regenerative condenser.
In 1850 he established the London sales office of
Siemens & Halske
Siemens & Halske AG (or Siemens-Halske) was a German electrical engineering company that later became part of Siemens.
It was founded on 12 October 1847 as ''Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske'' by Werner von Siemens and Johann Ge ...
, the engineering company producing
telegraph
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
s, which his brother Werner had founded in 1847 at Berlin. He started selling such devices to the wire rope producer
R.S. Newall and Company in
Dundee
Dundee (; sco, Dundee; gd, Dùn Dè or ) is Scotland's fourth-largest city and the 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mid-year population estimate for 2016 was , giving Dundee a population density of 2,478/km2 or ...
, of which his friend (and uncle of his later wife)
Lewis Gordon
Lewis Ricardo Gordon (born May 12, 1962) is an American philosopher at the University of Connecticut who works in the areas of Africana philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, social and political theory, postcolonial thought, theories of ...
was the co-owner. Newall & Co also outsourced test jobs for cables to Siemens and such enabled the new company to enter the ocean cable-laying business. The branch office became
Siemens Brothers
Siemens Brothers and Company Limited was an electrical engineering design and manufacturing business in London, England. It was first established as a branchThe company started with a small factory at 12 Millbank Row, Westminster SW1, London, nea ...
in 1858. In the 1850s, the company was involved in building long distance telegraph networks in Russia. In 1855, a company branch headed by another brother,
Carl Heinrich von Siemens
Carl Heinrich von Siemens (often just Carl von Siemens) (3 March 1829 – 21 March 1906) was a German entrepreneur.
He was born in Menzendorf, Mecklenburg, one of the fourteen children of a tenant farmer of the Siemens family, an old family of ...
, opened in
St Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
, Russia. By 1863, Sir William had his own cable factory built at
Charlton, London. In 1867, Siemens completed the monumental Indo-European (
Calcutta
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...
to London) telegraph line.
In 1859 William Siemens devoted a great part of his time to electrical invention and research; and the number of telegraph apparatus of all sorts – telegraph cables, land lines, and their accessories – which have emanated from the
Siemens Telegraph Works (at
Charlton, SE London) has been remarkable. In 1872 Sir William Siemens became the first President of the Society of Telegraph Engineers which became the
Institution of Electrical Engineers
The Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) was a British professional organisation of electronics, electrical, manufacturing, and Information Technology professionals, especially electrical engineers. It began in 1871 as the Society of Te ...
, the forerunner of the
Institution of Engineering and Technology
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is a multidisciplinary professional engineering institution. The IET was formed in 2006 from two separate institutions: the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), dating back to 1871, and ...
br>
In 1860 William Siemens constructed a remarkable gas engine (the same year the very first commercial engine was produced by
Étienne Lenoir, Lenoir). It didn't get beyond the experimental stage, though its principle of operation (described in Siemens British patent 2074 of 1860, and by Siemens in ''The Theory of the Gas Engine'') appears to be similar to the commercially successful
Brayton engine of 1872. In the discussion section of ''The Theory of the Gas Engine'' Siemens discloses that :
"The engine promised to give very good results, but about the same time he began to give his attention to the production of intense heat in furnaces, and having to make his choice between the two subjects, he selected the furnace and the metallurgic process leading out of it ; and that was why the engine had remained where it was for so long a time."
Siemens was also responsible for the hot tube ignition system used on many of the early gas engines.
In June 1862 he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...
and in 1871 delivered their
Bakerian Lecture.
As a member of the circumnavigation committee preparing the oceanographic
expedition of HMS ''Challenger'', Siemens was commissioned in 1871 to develop an electric thermometer to measure the temperature of the ocean at different depths.
He was elected as a member to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
in 1877.
The
regenerative furnace is the greatest single invention of Charles William Siemens, using a process known as the
Siemens-Martin process. The electric
pyrometer
A pyrometer is a type of remote-sensing thermometer used to measure the temperature of distant objects. Various forms of pyrometers have historically existed. In the modern usage, it is a device that from a distance determines the temperature of ...
, which is perhaps the most elegant and original of all William Siemens's inventions, is also the link which connects his electrical with his metallurgical researches. Siemens pursued two major themes in his inventive efforts, one based upon the science of heat, the other based upon the science of electricity; and the electric thermometer was, as it were, a delicate cross-coupling which connected both.
In 1874 he had a special
cable ship
A cable layer or cable ship is a deep-sea vessel designed and used to lay underwater cables for telecommunications, electric power transmission, military, or other purposes. Cable ships are distinguished by large cable sheaves for guiding cabl ...
built, according to his design, for ''Siemens Brothers'', the
CS ''Faraday''. In 1881, a Siemens
AC Alternator
An alternator is an electrical generator that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy in the form of alternating current. For reasons of cost and simplicity, most alternators use a rotating magnetic field with a stationary armature.Gor ...
driven by a
watermill
A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production of ...
was used to power the world's first electric street lighting in the town of
Godalming
Godalming is a market town and civil parish in southwest Surrey, England, around southwest of central London. It is in the Borough of Waverley, at the confluence of the Rivers Wey and Ock. The civil parish covers and includes the settleme ...
, United Kingdom.
See also
*
Siemens cycle
The Siemens cycle is a technique used to cool or liquefy gases. A gas is compressed, leading to an increase in its temperature due to the directly proportional relationship between temperature and pressure (as stated by Gay-Lussac's law). The c ...
*
Turboexpander
A turboexpander, also referred to as a turbo-expander or an expansion turbine, is a centrifugal or axial-flow turbine, through which a high-pressure gas is expanded to produce work that is often used to drive a compressor or generator.
Because ...
References
*''Shaping the Future. The Siemens Entrepreneurs 1847–2018.'' Ed. Siemens Historical Institute, Hamburg 2018, .
*William Pole, ''Life of William Siemens'', (London, 1888), p. 471; Facsimile reprint Siemens Ltd. 1986,
* Richard Hennig, ''Buch der berühmten Ingenieure'' (A book on famous engineers), (Leipzig, 1911)
*
*
* ''Sir William Siemens – A Man of Vision'', A collection of articles by various authors published by Siemens plc in 1993, contains substantial material on the history of Siemens in the UK
External links
Profile from the Siemens companyPast IEE PresidentsPortrait of Carl Wilhelm Siemens from the Lick Observatory Records Digital Archive, UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Siemens, Carl Wilhelm
1823 births
1883 deaths
19th-century German engineers
Bessemer Gold Medal
British electrical engineers
British inventors
German industrialists
British technology chief executives
Burials at Kensal Green Cemetery
Fellows of the Royal Society
German chief executives
German electrical engineers
German emigrants to the United Kingdom
19th-century German inventors
Knights Bachelor
Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
People associated with the internal combustion engine
People from Gehrden
People from the Kingdom of Hanover
People of the Industrial Revolution
Presidents of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers
Wilhelm
Wilhelm may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* William Charles John Pitcher, costume designer known professionally as "Wilhelm"
* Wilhelm (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname
Other uses
* Mount ...
Engineers from Lower Saxony