Siemens, Karl Wilhelm
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
see'menz, Karl Wilhelm (1823-1883), a German scientist and inventor. He was a native of Hanover and was educated at Lubeck, Magdeburg, and Gottingen. Among his inventions are a method of electroplating, a governor for steam engines, a gas furnace for metalworking, the Siemens process of making steel, and improvements in making and laying telegraph lines. He visited England repeatedly to patent his inventions. He finally settled in London, where he died. He was knighted by Queen Victoria for his eminent contributions to industrial science. See Steel Siena,se-a'na, a city of Italy. It is situated about sixty miles south of Florence on the road to Rome. It still retains the massive city walls and architectural features of the Middle Ages . Though now but a city of 30,000 people, dealing chiefly in wheat, wine, olives, and marble, it was formerly a center of culture inferior only to Rome and Florence. The cathedral and town palace are beautiful specimens of the builder's art. A copper bell dating from 1159, the oldest in Europe, hangs in the cathedral. Siena was a cradle of Italian literature , painting, and sculpture. Its tombs, towers, windows, fountains, paintings, statues, and mosaics are the delight of artists. The paintings are noted for brilliant colors and rich costumes. The University of Siena, founded in 1300, is still attended. Annual festivals are held, at which prizes are awarded for skillful horsemanship. The artist's pigment or color known as sienna is a fine clay found in the vicinity. It resembles yellow ocher, but gives a richer, darker, transparent effect. Burnt sienna, or sienna roasted in a furnace, gives a mahogany effect. See Italy Karl Marx. Prominent socialists Louis Blanc. Prominent socialists Wilhelm Liebknecht. Prominent socialists Robert Owen. Prominent socialists Ferdinand Lassalle. Prominent socialists Francois Marie Charles Fournier. Prominent socialists
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote this in 1910, the "Siemens process of making steel" was the dominant way the world made steel: his regenerative open-hearth furnace, worked out with the Martin brothers in France, out-produced the Bessemer converter for most of the twentieth century. It has since been almost entirely displaced by the basic oxygen converter, developed in Austria in the 1950s, and by the electric arc furnace; open-hearth steelmaking had essentially disappeared from Western plants by the 1990s. The man himself is now usually indexed under the name he used in England, Sir Charles William Siemens, and he is remembered as much for the transatlantic cable ships and the cable-laying work the entry mentions in passing. The electrical firm founded by his brother Werner survives as Siemens AG, one of the largest engineering companies in the world.
Written for this edition, 2026.