Sir William Siemens, in full Charles William Siemens, unique title Karl Wilhelm Siemens, (born April 4, 1823, Lenthe, Prussia [now in Germany]—died Nov. 19, 1883, London, Eng.), German-born English engineer and inventor, essential within the growth of the metal and telegraph industries.
After personal tutoring, Siemens was despatched to a industrial college at Lübeck to be able to enter his uncle’s financial institution. But his elder brother, Werner Siemens, deciding that engineering was extra appropriate, despatched him to a technical college at Magdeburg for 3 years. Financed by his uncle, he then studied chemistry, physics, and arithmetic for a yr on the University of Göttingen, the place his brother-in-law was a professor of chemistry. Through his brother’s affect he grew to become an apprentice-student, with out price, in an engineering manufacturing unit making steam engines in Magdeburg. While there, he decided to promote Werner’s electroplating course of; after modest success in Hamburg, William traveled to London, arriving in March 1843 with only some kilos in money. He bought the method to Elkingtons of Birmingham for £1,600. He returned to Germany to finish his research after which went once more to England in February 1844 with the intention of promoting additional innovations.
Finding that the patent legal guidelines in England had been encouraging, William boldly determined to settle there as an inventor, however he discovered it tough to make a residing till his water meter, invented in 1851, started to earn giant royalties. He might now afford an workplace in London and a home in Kensington, the place he lived along with his youthful brothers, Carl (1829–1906) and August Friedrich (1826–1904), till his marriage in 1859 to Anne Gordon, the sister of an engineering professor on the University of Glasgow. The similar yr, he additionally obtained British citizenship.
Beginning in 1847, William and his brother Friedrich had tried to use to industrial processes the regenerative precept, by which warmth escaping with waste gases was captured to warmth the air provided to a furnace, thus rising effectivity. In 1861 William used this precept in his patent for the open-hearth furnace that was heated by fuel produced by low-grade coal exterior the furnace. This invention, first utilized in glassmaking, was quickly broadly utilized in steelmaking and finally supplanted the sooner Bessemer course of of 1856. William’s achievements had been acknowledged by his membership within the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1860 and by his election as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1862. Tempted by the prospect of income in addition to royalties, he began his personal steelworks at Landore, South Wales, in 1869; however, though it flourished for some years, he was shedding cash by the Eighties.
Meanwhile, he had made yet one more popularity and fortune in electrical telegraphy. Beginning in 1850, he had acted as English agent for his brother Werner’s agency, Siemens & Halske of Berlin, a connection he maintained till 1858, when he grew to become managing associate of the separate London agency based underneath the identical title; the agency was engaged in electrical testing for cable companies and within the manufacturing of equipment. The English agency laid, in 1874, {the electrical} cable from Rio de Janeiro to Montevideo and, in 1875, the primary direct hyperlink from Britain to the United States.
Thereafter, William labored on electrical lighting and electrical traction. He invented enhancements in arc lights and had them put in within the British Museum and elsewhere. A number of months earlier than he died he was answerable for the Portrush electrical railway in Northern Ireland. He performed a full half in skilled life: he acted as president of assorted skilled organizations together with the British Association for the Advancement of Science, obtained honorary levels from numerous universities and plenty of overseas orders, and was knighted within the yr of his dying. He left a big fortune however no youngsters.