Sir Carl Wilhelm Siemens FRS FRSA (4 April 1823 – 19 November 1883), also known as Charles William Siemens, was a German-British electrical engineer and businessman. He was born on April 4, 1823, in the Kingdom of Hanover and died on November 19, 1883, at the age of 60 in London. His nationalities were British and German. His siblings included Carl Heinrich von Siemens and Werner von Siemens. His parents were Christian Ferdinand Siemens and Eleonore Deichmann. He received the Albert Medal in 1874 and the Royal Society Bakeries Medal in 1871. He became a member of the Royal Society in 1862. He invented the regenerative furnace, which led to a process later called the Siemens-Martin process.
Early life and education
In the autumn of 1838, when William was fifteen years old, he started studying to become an engineer. He attended the Gewerbe-Schule Magdeburg, a well-known school for trade and commerce. William had a close relationship with his oldest brother, Ernst Werner Siemens, who taught him mathematics so William could learn English instead. This arrangement helped both of them, and William’s knowledge of English became a big help. He passed his exams easily. Less than a year later, their mother died, followed by their father in 1840.
After finishing his studies at the Magdeburg school, William went to the University of Göttingen. There, he took classes in physical geography, technology, advanced mathematics, theoretical chemistry, and practical chemistry and physics. For a short time, he also worked with Wilhelm Weber, a famous scientist and inventor, in his Magnetic Observatory.
William was nearly nineteen when he left university to become a trainee engineer. He also had time for other activities, such as taking dance lessons and painting a landscape of Nordhausen for the wife of a factory manager. His progress in the engineering factory was so fast that his two-year apprenticeship was shortened to one year.
Because the education of the younger family members became a financial challenge, Carl Wilhelm Siemens left for London on March 10, 1843. He was acting as a representative for his brother Werner and hoped to earn money by selling a patent in England to support his siblings. He wanted to see England and paid £1 for the journey. William had already shown business skills by financing his own trip by selling an invention from his brother, an improvement to the gold and silver plating process, to George Richards Elkington. William knew, as he wrote to Werner, that his visit might not succeed, but if it did, he planned to stay. This turned out to be true.
Career
Charles William Siemens studied mechanical engineering and initially focused on non-electrical projects. His most important early invention was the regenerative furnace. In 1847, he wrote a paper about "Mercaptan of Selenium" for Liebig's Annalen der Chemie, but he was also deeply interested in new scientific ideas about heat from scientists like Carnot, Clapeyron, Joule, Clausius, Mayer, Thomson, and Rankine. He rejected the old belief that heat was a substance and instead accepted it as a form of energy. Using this new understanding, he built a four-horsepower engine in 1847 at John Hick’s factory in Bolton. This engine used superheated steam and had a condenser with regenerators to save heat.
In 1849, Siemens continued his experiments at the works of Fox, Henderson, and Co. in Smethwick, near Birmingham. Using superheated steam was difficult, and the invention was not fully successful. However, in 1850, the Society of Arts recognized the value of his regenerative condenser by awarding him a gold medal.
In 1850, Siemens opened a London sales office for Siemens & Halske, the engineering company his brother Werner had founded in 1847 in Berlin. He sold telegraph devices to R. S. Newall and Company in Dundee, where his friend Lewis Gordon was a co-owner. Newall & Co. also hired Siemens to test cables, helping the company enter the ocean cable-laying business. The London office became Siemens Brothers in 1858. In the 1850s, the company built long-distance telegraph networks in Russia. In 1855, another brother, Carl Heinrich von Siemens, opened a branch in St. Petersburg, Russia. By 1863, Sir William built a cable factory in Charlton, London. In 1867, Siemens completed the Indo-European telegraph line connecting Calcutta to London.
In 1859, Siemens focused on electrical inventions and research. The Siemens Telegraph Works in Charlton, London, produced many telegraph devices, including cables, land lines, and accessories. In 1872, Sir William became the first president of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, which later became the Institution of Electrical Engineers, a predecessor of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
In 1860, Siemens built a gas engine, which was not commercially produced but shared similarities with the later Brayton engine. He also developed the hot tube ignition system used in early gas engines. In 1862, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and delivered the Bakerian Lecture in 1871.
As part of the HMS Challenger oceanographic expedition, Siemens designed an electric thermometer to measure ocean temperatures at different depths in 1871. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1877.
The regenerative furnace was Charles William Siemens’ greatest invention. His regenerative principles were later used by French engineer Pierre-Émile Martin in 1865 to create the Siemens-Martin process for open-hearth furnaces, which changed steel manufacturing. His electric pyrometer connected his work in electricity and metallurgy. Siemens focused on two main areas: heat and electricity. The electric thermometer linked these fields.
In 1874, Siemens designed the cable ship CS Faraday for Siemens Brothers. In 1881, a Siemens AC alternator powered the world’s first electric street lighting in Godalming, United Kingdom.