Page:Heroes of the telegraph (IA cu31924031222494).djvu/137

 Mr. S. A. Varley had lodged an application for a British patent, in which the same idea was set forth. The claims of these three inventors to priority in the discovery were, however, anticipated by at least one other investigator, Herr Sören Hjorth, believed to be a Dane by birth, and still remembered by a few living electricians, though forgotten by the scientific world at large, until his neglected specification was unexpectedly dug out of the musty archives of the British Patent Office and brought into the light.

The announcement of Siemens and Wheatstone came at an apter time than Hjorth's, and was more conspicuously made. Above all, in the affluent and enterprising hands of the brothers Siemens, it was not suffered to lie sterile, and the Siemens dynamo-electric machine was its offspring. This dynamo, as is well known, differs from those of Gramme and Paccinotti chiefly in the longitudinal winding of the armature, and it is unnecessary to describe it here. It has been adapted by its inventors to all kinds of electrical work, electrotyping, telegraphy, electric lighting, and the propulsion of vehicles.

The first electric tramway run at Berlin in 1879 was followed by another at Dusseldorf in 1880, and a third at Paris in 1881. With all of these the name of Werner Siemens was chiefly associated; but William Siemens had also taken up the matter, and established at his country house of Sherwood, near Tunbridge Wells, an arrangement of dynamos and water-wheel, by which the power of a neighbouring stream was made to light the house, cut chaff turn washing-machines, and perform other household duties. More recently the construction of the electric railway from Portrush to Bushmills, at the Giant's Causeway, engaged his attention; and this, the first work of its kind in the United Kingdom, and to all appearance