the universe into a regenerative furnace.  On a small scale, in a way adapted to ordinary human uses, and by ingenious contrivances, he produced a regenerative gas furnace which so utilized what had hitherto been wasted that, in the last lecture delivered by Michael Faraday (1862) before the Royal Society, he praised the qualities of the furnace for its economy and ease of management; and it soon came into general use.  It is probably impossible to calculate the amount of saving to the world due to his practical application of the theory of the conservation of force to the pursuits of industry.  It has changed the processes for the production of steel so as to make it much cheaper, and so revolutionized ship-building.  The carrying power of steel ships is so much greater than that of iron ships that the former earn twenty-five per centum more than the latter.  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.  His suggestions will, undoubtedly, be carried out.  He was also the inventor of the “chronometric governor,” an apparatus which regulates the movements of the great transit instruments at Greenwich.

These are some of the practical benefits bestowed upon mankind by Sir William Siemens.  He did much, by stimulating men, to make science practically useful, and has left suggestions which, if followed out with energy and wisdom, will add greatly to the comfort of the world.  He calculated that “all the coal raised throughout the world would barely suffice to produce the amount of power that runs to waste at Niagara alone,” and said that it would not be difficult to realize a large proportion of this wasted power by-turbines, and to use it at greater distances by means of dynamo-electrical machines.  Myriads of future inhabitants of America are probably to reap untold wealth and comfort from what was said and done by Sir William Siemens.