The Messrs. Siemens were also pioneers in submarine telegraphy, the first cable covered with gutta-percha having been laid across the Rhine by Dr. Werner Siemens in 1847. The invention of the machine for coating the conducting wire with the insulating material, gutta-percha, or india rubber, is entirely due to Dr. William Siemens, who also subsequently designed the steamship _Faraday_ for the special work of laying and repairing submarine cables. This unique vessel was launched on Feb. 16, 1874, and when she was completed, Dr. Siemens invited all his scientific friends to inspect her, and challenged them to suggest any improvements in her arrangements. She was first used in laying the Direct United States Cable, which is above 3,000 miles in length. In this connection I may perhaps be permitted to relate a very characteristic anecdote. When Dr. Siemens took a contract for a cable, the electrical tests of which were specified, it was his invariable habit to give out to the works a considerably higher test, which every section of the cable had to pass, or be rejected _in toto_. In the case of this cable, probably during manipulation on board ship, a minute piece of wire penetrated the insulating material, bringing down the electrical test to a point below the “works” test, but still decidedly above the contract test. The discovery was not made until so late that to cut out the faulty piece involved a delay of some days in the middle of the Atlantic, but Dr. Siemens insisted upon its being done; after this, stormy weather came on, and the cable had to be cut and buoyed, while the _Faraday_ had to winter on the American side, and resume operations next spring. The money loss involved amounted, I am told, to more than £30,000. Perhaps the most remarkable of the later feats was the fulfilment of a contract with the Compagnie Française du Telegraphe de Paris à New York, who ordered a cable 3,000 miles long from the Messrs. Siemens in March, 1879, and it was handed over to them in perfect working order in September of the same year! There are now nearly 90,000 miles of submarine cable at work, costing about £32,000,000, and a fleet of thirty-two ships are employed in laying, watching, and repairing these cables, of which there are now eleven across the Atlantic alone.