Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 March 1893 — Beginnings of an Inventor. [ARTICLE]

Beginnings of an Inventor.

A Berlin correspondent sends to the New York Iribune a letter about Werner von Siemens, the famous inventor, who died recently in that city. The whole city, and indeed the whole of Germany, was in mourning for him. Among those who felt his death the most keenly were the poor of Berlin, thousands of whom had been helped by his generosity. In his “Memoirs,” which he completed only a short time before his last illness, he dwells upon an incident of his boyhood, trifling in itself, that had a great influence upon his subsequent career. It was nothing more than a victory over a gander. His younger sister, he says, was sent by her mother to get some trifle in the barn. She returned a minute later crying, because a terrible gander had tried to attack her as she passed the barnyard gate. A second attempt on her part was equally unsuccessful. Then an appeal was. made to Werner. “My father,” he writes, "gave me a stick and told me to use it when attacked by the gander, and all would go well. With my sister I opened the gate, and the bird, hissing, and with bended neck, started toward us. My sister, crying, clung close to me. “I wished to flee, but remembering my father’s words, I marched toward the gander with my eyes shut and brandishing my stick to the right and left. True enough, the bird turned and rah away, and we accomplished our errand.” To the boy it was a great victory, and he never forgot it. In after life, whenever he was near becoming discouraged before some almost insuperable difficulty, he remembered the gander, and shutting his eyes, as he used to say, he pushed on to a new triumph. His first patent was applied for from a prison cell. After graduation from the artillery school, in Berlin, he was attached to a regiment in Wittenberg. Here he acted as second in a duel, and was sentenced to ftve years’ imprisonment. In his cell, however, he was allowed to fit up a laboratory and continue the scientific experiments on which he had been engaged. Within a month after his incarceration he perfected his method of galvanic gilding, and applied for a patent. It was granted, and a pardon with it. Probably a pardon was never received with less glee. Siemens had other experiments under way in his workshop, and begged to be allowed to remain till they were finished, but the keeper told him that such a course would be an insult to the King, and sent him forth.