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Ernst Werner von Siemens

 
Scientist: Ernst Werner von Siemens
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German engineer (1816–1892)

The son of a farmer from Lenthe in Germany, Siemens was the eldest of fourteen highly talented children, who included William Siemens. In 1834 he joined the Prussian army and spent three years in Berlin receiving a thorough training in science and mathematics. Afterward duties were so light as to allow him to pursue his growing interest in chemistry and electricity. From this work he derived his first invention, a new system of electroplating sold by his brother William in London for £1600 in 1843.

In 1847 Siemens founded, with Johann Halske (1814–90), the firm of Siemens and Halske, later to become one of the major industrial concerns in Europe. Initially Siemens hoped to move into the rapidly growing telegraphy business. In 1847 he built the Berlin–Frankfurt line, insulating the underground cables with the newly introduced gutta-percha. Unfortunately for Siemens the gutta-percha had been vulcanized and the copper wire and sulfur destroyed the insulation. Contracts were canceled and, for a time, Siemens found it necessary to work outside Germany. The period, nonetheless, gave Siemens time to experiment, refine, and improve on the basic principles of telegraphy. He was consequently selected to construct the telegraph line connecting London to Calcutta, a distance of 11,000 kilometers, which was completed in 1870.

Siemens's other main interest lay in power generation. The early electric generators were cumbersome machines using large steel permanent magnets and delivering very little power. In 1867 Siemens proposed to replace them with the self-activating dynamo. The permanent magnets were replaced by electromagnets and these were fed by a current obtained from an armature and commutator. Once the dynamo had been perfected it made possible the many manifestations of electric power – lighting, both domestic and public, transport, heating, cooling, and so on. The Siemens companies were well placed to take advantage of the commercial and industrial revolution created by the dynamo. Perhaps the clearest measure of the achievements of Siemens could once have been found in Berlin, where the suburb in which the firm's factories were located and where 120,000 men were employed was named Siemensstadt.

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Columbia Encyclopedia: Ernst Werner von Siemens
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Siemens, Ernst Werner von (ĕrnst vĕr'nər fən zē'məns), 1816-92, German electrical engineer and inventor. He was a founder and director of Siemens and Halske, a firm that made electrical apparatus. He was co-inventor of an electroplating process (1841), and alone developed an electric dynamo. He laid the first telegraph line and built the first electric railway in Germany and, with his brother Sir William Siemens, developed (1866) a widely used process of steelmaking. The Siemens unit of electrical conductance was proposed by him. In 1884 he founded a research laboratory at Charlottenburg.

Bibliography

See his Inventor and Entrepreneur (1892, tr. 1966) and his Scientific and Technical Papers (2 vol., tr. 1892-95).

WordNet: Ernst Werner von Siemens
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: German electrical engineer (1816-1892)
  Synonym: Siemens

Wikipedia: Ernst Werner von Siemens
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Werner von Siemens

Born 13 December 1816(1816-12-13)
Lenthe, Germany
Died 6 December 1892 (aged 75)
Fields inventor

Ernst Werner von Siemens (known as Werner von Siemens) (13 December 1816 – 6 December 1892) was a German inventor and industrialist. Siemens' name has been adopted as the SI unit of electrical conductance, the siemens.

Contents

Biography

Early years

Werner Siemens was born in Lenthe, today part of Gehrden, near Hanover, Germany, the fourth child (of fourteen) of a tenant farmer. He is a brother of Carl Heinrich von Siemens and William Siemens, sons of Christian Ferdinand Siemens (31 July 1787 - 16 January 1840) and wife Eleonore Deichmann (1792 - 8 July 1839). They had two more brothers, Hans Siemens (1818-1867) and Friedrich August Siemens (8 December 1828 - 24 May 1904), married and father to Friedrich Carl Siemens (6 January 1877 - 25 June 1952 in Berlin), married on 22 May 1920 in Berlin to Melanie Bertha Gräfin Yorck von Wartenburg (1 February 1899 in Klein Oels - 15 May 1950 in Berlin) (the parents of Heinrich Werner Andreas Siemens (born 28 September 1921, Annabel Siemens (born 3 May 1923), Daniela Siemens (born 31 July 1926) and Peter Siemens (born 8 November 1928).

Middle years

Siemens left school without finishing his education, but joined the army to undertake training in engineering. His training helped exponentially. Siemens was thought of as a good soldier, as he received various medals for his services. Upon returning home from war, he put his mind to other uses. He is known world-wide for his advances in various technologies, and chose to work on perfecting technologies that have already been established. Siemens invented a telegraph that used a needle to point to the right letter, instead of using Morse code. Based on this invention, he founded the company Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske on 1 October 1847, with the company taking occupation of its workshop on 12 October.

The company was internationalised soon after its founding. One brother of Werner represented him in England (Sir William Siemens) and another in St.Petersburg, Russia (Carl von Siemens), each earning separate recognition in their own right. Following his industrial career, he was ennobled in 1888, becoming Werner von Siemens. He retired from his company in 1890 and died in 1892 in Berlin.

The company, reorganized as Siemens & Halske AG, Siemens-Schuckertwerke and – since 1966 – Siemens AG was later led by his brothers, his four sons Arnold, Wilhelm, and Carl Friedrich and his nephews Hermann, Ernst and Peter von Siemens. Siemens AG is still one of the largest electrotechnological firms of the world.

Later years

Apart from the pointer telegraph Siemens made several contributions to the development of electrical engineering and is therefore known as the founding father of the discipline in Germany. He built the world's first electric elevator in 1880[1]. His company produced the tubes with which Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen investigated x-rays. He claimed invention of the dynamo although others invented it earlier. On 14 December 1877 he received German patent No. 2355 for an electromechanical "dynamic" or moving-coil transducer, which was adapted by A. L. Thuras and E. C. Wente for the Bell System in the late 1920s for use as a loudspeakerish thing.[2] Wente's adaptation was issued US patent 1,707,545 in 1929. Siemens is also the father of the trolleybus which he initially tried and tested with his "Elektromote" on 29 April 1882.

Personal life

He married twice, first in 1852 to Mathilde Duman (died 1 July 1867) and second in 1869 to his relative Antonie Siemens (1840 - 1900). Children from first marriage were Arnold von Siemens and Georg Wilhelm von Siemens. Children from second marriage were Hertha von Siemens (1870 - 5 January 1939), married in 1899 to Carl Dietrich Harries, and Carl Friedrich von Siemens.

Patents

See also

References

  1. ^ The History of the Elevator - Elisha Otis
  2. ^ Ed. M. D. Fagen, "A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: The Early Years", Bell Laboratories, 1975, P. 183.

External links

Further reading

  • Werner von Siemens, Lebenserinnerungen, Berlin, 1892 (reprinted as Mein Leben, Zeulenroda, 1939).
  • Werner von Siemens, Scientific & Technical Papers of Werner von Siemens. Vol. 1: Scientific Papers and Addresses, London, 1892; Vol. 2: Technical Papers, London, 1895.
  • Sigfrid von Weiher, Werner von Siemens, A Life in the Service of Science, Technology and Industry, Göttingen, 1975.
  • Wilfried Feldenkirchen, Werner von Siemens, Inventor and International Entrepreneur. Columbus, Ohio, 1994.
  • Wilfried Feldenkirchen / Eberhard Posner, The Siemens Entrepreneurs, Continuity and Change, 1847–2005, Ten Portraits, Munich, 2005.

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Scientist. A Dictionary of Scientists. Copyright © Market House Books Ltd 1993, 1999, 2003. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
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