Siemens is the name of a family of engineers, inventors, and industrialists in the field of electricity. (Ernst) Werner von Siemens, b. Dec. 13, 1816, d. Dec. 6, 1892, founded (1847), with a mechanic, Johann Georg Halske, a German telegraphic manufacturing and repair business, Siemens and Halske. The small firm was to become one of the major electrical manufacturing companies in Europe. Siemens's technical achievements included the first use (1847) of gutta-percha as a cable insulant, the patenting (1842) of an electroplating process, the independent discovery (1866) of the dynamo-electrical principle, and the development of the self-excited dynamo. Sir William Siemens, brother of Werner, b. Carl Wilhelm Siemens, Apr. 4, 1823, d. Nov. 19, 1883, went (1843) to England and became the head of the English branch of the Siemens firm. He invented and improved a water meter in the 1850s and promoted many of Werner's projects. With his brother Friedrich he developed (1861) a regenerative furnace, which was the basis of the Siemens-Martin, or open-hearth, process used in the glass and steel industries. After World War II, recovering with the West German economic boom, the companies were merged (1966) into the huge electrical equipment firm Siemens AG.
