So great a gain is
this, that one-fourth the total tonnage of British ship-building in 1883
consisted of steel vessels.
Sir William Siemens's name is popularly associated with electric light.
Perhaps it can not be claimed that he was the sole inventor of it, since
Faraday had discovered the principle, and at the meeting of the Royal
Society, in 1867, at which Siemens's paper was read, the same
application of the principle was announced in a paper which had been
prepared by Sir Charles Wheatstone, and a patent had been sought by Mr.
Cromwell Varley, whose application involved the same idea. But it is
believed that Sir William did more than any other man to make the
discovery of wide and great practical benefit. His dynamo machine is
capable of transforming into electrical energy ninety per cent of the
mechanical energy employed. His inventions for the application of
electricity to industry are too numerous to mention. He has made it a
hewer of wood and a drawer of water and a general farm-hand, and has
shown how it can be applied to the raising and ripening of fruits. He
has shown us how gas can be made so that its "by-products" shall pay for
its production, and demonstrated that a pound of gas yields, in burning,
22,000 units, being double that produced by the combustion of a pound of
common coal. He has put the world in the way of making gas cheap and
brilliant. His sudden death prevented the completion of plans by which
London will save three-fourths of its coal bill by getting rid of its
hideous fog.
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