Siemens United Kingdom

Shortly before his twentieth birthday, William Siemens arrived in the UK with only a few pounds in his pocket. He soon struck his first business deal by selling a patent for a unique electroplating process.

Werner Siemens invented the first automatic dial telegraph and founded his company in Germany with his brother, William, as the company's agent in England.

The water meter was first presented to the public at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and patented by Siemens in 1852, to enable more efficient and less wasteful water distribution to England's ever-growing towns.

Siemens’ UK subsidiary was set up under the leadership of William Siemens.

Siemens opened its first UK factory in Woolwich, south London, to produce submarine cables.

Siemens patented the electric dynamo, the starting point for electrical engineering that later enabled major developments in the UK, including the first electric street lighting in 1881 and the first public electric railway in 1883.

An early player in telecommunications, Siemens laid the Indo-European telegraph link. Running for nearly 7,000 miles, the London to Calcutta line cut the time required for a message to travel between the two cities from many days to just 28 minutes.

Using ‘Faraday’, the ship specially designed by William Siemens, the company laid the first telegraphic cable from Ireland to the USA, enabling transatlantic telecommunications.

Siemens provided the first electric lighting in a British theatre – London’s Savoy Theatre. Siemens dynamo machines powered the internal lights.

Sir William Siemens, one of the first environmentalists, was greatly concerned about waste and pollution. In this year he gave a lecture in which he declared: “The point at which science and arts should be directed chiefly is the prevention of waste. In doing so we should vastly increase not only our national resources but our individual well-being.”

To help local businesses transport heavy machinery between sites, Siemens completed a six-and-a-half mile single-track line from Portrush to Bush Mills in Ireland. Probably the first electric train contract in the world, its power originated from a waterfall that drove a Siemens dynamo.

The building of a new factory began in Stafford. The new site, which started operating two years later, produced dynamos.

After the successful introduction of the tantalum lamp in Germany, a factory opened in Dalston, London, to product and market the bulb in Britain.

Siemens built the world’s first set of traffic lights at Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz. Today, Siemens manufactures and maintains more of the UK’s traffic infrastructure than any other company.

The Siemens Electronic Switching Laboratory began, in co-operation with, amongst others, the Post Office, to design and build a model electronic telephone exchange.

Having been involved in medical engineering since before World War II, Siemens consolidated its position in the UK with the acquisition of its agent, Sierex Ltd.

Siemens was behind the first 1MB memory chip to go into production. All major UK computer manufacturers quickly adopted the new chip.

Siemens was behind the first GSM mobile phone with colour display.

Siemens and Fujitsu joined forces with a goal to establish Fujitsu Siemens Computers, a joint venture company that has since become one of the world’s leading computer suppliers.

Siemens developed Hawk-Eye, innovative image-processing technology, to track and predict the path of a cricket ball from the bowler’s hand to batsman, bringing endless benefits to players, umpires, coaches, broadcasters and supporters.

Siemens made a major breakthrough in the development of UMTS, the next-generation mobile communications system, when a team of its engineers made the world’s first call over the latest high-speed network.

Siemens won its biggest ever contract in the UK – a £1 billion order to provide its new Desiro electric trains to Stagecoach Group and Angel Trains for the South West Trains network.