William Siemens received his early educational training at Lübeck, and in the course of it the stimulus afforded to excellence of workmanship by the German guild system made an early and lasting impression upon his mind, for he repeatedly referred to it in after life. From Lübeck he went to the Polytechnical School at Magdeburg, where he studied physical science with apparatus of the most primitive kind, and under great disadvantages, as compared with the facilities of our modern laboratories. After this he studied at Göttingen University, where, under Wöhler and Himly, he first got that insight into chemical laws which laid the foundation of his metallurgical knowledge, and here began to develop in him that wonderful thirst for discovery, which abundant success never quenched. Here, also, occurred what he has himself described as “the determining incident of his life.” Mr. Elkington, of Birmingham, utilising the discoveries of Davy, Faraday, and Jacobi, had devised the first practical application of that form of energy which we now call the electric current, and in 1842 he established a practical process of electro-plating. In the following year, as the result of his own and his brother Werner’s work, William Siemens presented himself before Mr. Elkington with an improvement in his process, which was adopted. This is the first on the list of inventions on the diagram behind me. Speaking of his first landing in London he says: “I expected to find some office in which inventions were examined, and rewarded if found meritorious; but no one could direct me to such a place. In walking along Finsbury Pavement, I saw written up in large letters so-and-so (I forget the name) ‘undertaker,’ and the thought struck me that this must be the place I was in quest of. At any rate I thought that a person advertising himself as an undertaker would not refuse to look into my invention, with a view of obtaining for me the sought-for recognition or reward. On entering the place I soon convinced myself, however, that I had come decidedly too soon for the kind of enterprise there contemplated, and finding myself confronted with the proprietor of the establishment, I covered my retreat by what he must have thought a very inadequate excuse.”