Dr. Werner Von Siemens

Abstract

WERNER VON SIEMENS was a representative man of this nineteenth century, the century in which “the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man” has been more studied and applied than in any other, we were almost saying than in all others. And no other century has produced quite such a man—a man in whom the ability to apprehend the secrets of nature was united with the ability to apply them to industrial purposes. Many circumstances combined to favour him, both of a personal and public character. His father was evidently a man of strong common sense; his mother was refined in her tastes, cultured in her mind, and devoted to her children. The children were fortunate in having such parents to guide and watch over them. At that time, as now, first-rate schools and colleges existed throughout what now forms the German Empire, and in these a good mathematical and scientific education was to be obtained, which was taken advantage of by the Siemenses, both as boys and young men. Another matter which was specially favourable to Werner Siemens was his military training; regular drill, strict discipline, endurance, and implicit obedience, learnt and practised in his own person, helped to make a man of him. Besides this, these young men were born just at the right time, if we may say so, to take advantage of the recent discoveries in, and formulation of the principles of, the natural sciences of heat and electricity and magnetism. These sciences were at that period in the active, nascent state. Galvani and Volta, Gauss and Weber, Oersted and Faraday had set the world wondering, and themselves, the philosophers, thinking, analysing, and systematising, and the men of imaginative minds, the poets of industry, inventing. Great discoveries had been made in former days, but these were in the realms of the Cosmos; they were not suitable for application to the daily uses of men, and were not, as those were, startling and impressive.

Personal Recollections of Werner von Siemens.

Translated by W. C. Coupland. (Asher and Co., 1893.)