Professor Clerk Maxwell thought this discovery the greatest of
the century; and the remark has been repeated more than once. But it is
a remark which derives its chief importance from the man who made it,
and its credentials from the paradoxical surprise it causes. The
discovery in question is certainly fraught with very great consequences
to the mechanical world; but in itself it is no discovery of importance,
and naturally follows from Faraday's far greater and more original
discovery of magneto-electric generation.
In 1874, Dr. Siemens published a treatise on the laying and testing of
submarine cables. In 1875, 1876 and 1877, he investigated the action of
light on crystalline selenium, and in 1878 he studied the action of the
telephone.
The recent work of Dr. Siemens has been to improve the pneumatic
railway, railway signalling, electric lamps, dynamos, electro-plating
and electric railways. The electric railway at Berlin in 1880, and
Paris in 1881, was the beginning of electric locomotion, a subject of
great importance and destined in all probability, to very wide extension
in the immediate future. Dr. Siemens has received many honours from
learned societies at home and abroad; and a title equivalent to
knighthood from the German Government.
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