The elder of these, Johann Wolfgang, worked at his trade as a journeyman in a number of the small cities of Germany, and only after ten years of absence in what, because of the independent condition of the States now known as the German Empire, were then considered foreign parts, did he wander back to his native place. On his return he received the mastership in his craft, and shortly after, about 1786, married a young woman named Beck. George Simon Ohm, the electrical scientist, was the first child of this marriage, and was born March 16th, 1789. A second son, born three years later, also became distinguished in after-life for his mathematical ability. This younger brother, after having filled a number of teaching positions in various German educational institutions, was called as professor of mathematics to Berlin, where he died in 1862. While their father, Johann Wolfgang Ohm, followed his trade of locksmith for a living, like many another handicraftsman, he had many mental interests which he cultivated in leisure hours, and doubtless dwelt on while his hands were occupied with the mere routine work of his trade. It is curiously interesting to find that he devoted himself, during the hours he could spare from his occupation, to two such diverse intellectual occupations as mathematics and Kant's philosophy; but they had no newspapers in those days, and a man, even of the artisan class, had some time for serious mental occupation. It might be thought, under these circumstances, that he would be but the most passing of amateurs in either of these subjects, and have a very superficial knowledge of them. This probably was true for his philosophy fad, for there are not many who have ever thought themselves more than amateurs in Kantism, and even Kant himself, I believe, thought that only one scholar ever really understood his system, and subsequently said he had some doubts even about that one; but in mathematics, the elder Ohm seems to have attained noteworthy success.