Germany’s leading electro-technological company, Siemens (www.siemens.com) was founded by the inventor and entrepreneur Ernst Werner von Siemens (1816-1892) 166 years ago, on 1 October 1847. To pay honour to his achievements, the SI unit of electrical conductance was named Siemens after him. Among many other things, Siemens developed a new governor for the steam engine, a press for the manufacture of cast stone, perfected the telegraph, discovered the dynamo principle independently of Hungarian ?nyos Jedlik, made designs for the first electric railway, defined the electric resistance of a number of materials, built the first electric elevator, and the construction of an electric street lighting system in Germany is also hallmarked by his name.

Soon after its establishment, the company, originally called Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske (Siemens worked with Johann Georg Halske on the telegraph), was internationalised; it was represented by one of Siemens’ brothers both in England and St. Petersburg. In 1848 they built Europe’s longest telegraph line of the time between Berlin and Frankfurt am Main. In the 1850s they built telegraph lines in Russia as well. The company built the first electric street lighting network in 1881 in Godalming, a town in South England. The founder retired in 1890.

After re-organisation in 1897, the company’s name was simplified and called Siemens & Halske (S&H), then renamed Siemens-Schuckertwerke, and finally became Siemens AG in 1966. In the 1920s and 1930s the company mainly manufactured radios and early television sets. Key areas in the firm’s current activities include ICT (computer technology, business services, home and office communication devices), automation and regulation, power generation, transportation and logistics, transport, healthcare and lighting.