Werner von Siemens

Ernst Werner Siemens, ennobled in 1888 as Werner von Siemens, was a German electrical engineer, inventor and industrialist who lived from 1816 to 1892. Trained as an artillery officer at the Prussian Military Academy, he invented a pointer telegraph that used a needle instead of Morse code and on 1 October 1847 founded the firm Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens and Halske, which grew into the electrical and telecommunications conglomerate Siemens. His brothers Carl and William represented the firm in St. Petersburg and England, and the company was internationalised soon after its founding. He built the first electric passenger train in 1879, the first electric elevator in 1880 and tested the first trolleybus in 1882, and he claimed the invention of the dynamo. He retired from the company in 1890 and died in Berlin in 1892. The SI unit of electrical conductance, the siemens, carries his name.