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281
Heroes of the Telegraph
·
John Munro
103
Siemens
had
been
trained
as
a
mechanical
engineer,
and,
although
he
became
an
eminent
electrician
in
later
life,
his
most
important
work
at
this
early
stage
was
non-electrical;
indeed,
the
greatest
achievement
of
his
life
was
non-electrical,
for
we
must
regard
the
regenerative
furnace
as
his
MAGNUM
OPUS.
Though
in
1847
he
published
a
paper
in
Liebig's
ANNALEN
DER
CHEMIE
on
the
'Mercaptan
of
Selenium,'
his
mind
was
busy
with
the
new
ideas
upon
the
nature
of
heat
which
were
promulgated
by
Carnot,
Clayperon,
Joule,
Clausius,
Mayer,
Thomson,
and
Rankine.
He
discarded
the
older
notions
of
heat
as
a
substance,
and
accepted
it
as
a
form
of
energy.
Working
on
this
new
line
of
thought,
which
gave
him
an
advantage
over
other
inventors
of
his
time,
he
made
his
first
attempt
to
economise
heat,
by
constructing,
in
1847,
at
the
factory
of
Mr.
John
Hick,
of
Bolton,
an
engine
of
four
horse-power,
having
a
condenser
provided
with
regenerators,
and
utilising
superheated
steam.
Two
years
later
he
continued
his
experiments
at
the
works
of
Messrs.
Fox,
Henderson,
and
Co.,
of
Smethwick,
near
Birmingham,
who
had
taken
the
matter
in
hand.
The
use
of
superheated
steam
was,
however,
attended
with
many
practical
difficulties,
and
the
invention
was
not
entirely
successful,
but
it
embraced
the
elements
of
success;
and
the
Society
of
Arts,
in
1850,
acknowledged
the
value
of
the
principle,
by
awarding
Mr.
Siemens
a
gold
medal
for
his
regenerative
condenser.
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