Wvs satz final indd

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stag adopted the Patent Law, which took effect on July 1. It provid-

ed for establishing a Patent Offi ce and introduced the require-

ment of publication, compulsory implementation, and an entitle-

ment to be granted a patent. From now on, patents would have a 

term of 15 years and were no longer granted to the inventor, but 

to the applicant.

28

 Thus industry and industrial associations 

had won out – the great age of individual inventors was past. The 

sharp increase in patent applications over the next few years 

shows that the new law encouraged Germany’s economic develop-

ment. On July 1, 1877, the President of the new Kaiserliche Paten-

tamt (Imperial Patent Offi ce) appointed Werner von Siemens a 

non-permanent member of the authority. The position was asso-

ciated with an appointment as “Geheimrat” (Privy Councilor). 

Certificate appointing Werner von Siemens a member 

of the Kaiserliche Patentamt, July 1, 1877

July 1, 1877   

Today’s German Patent and Trade Mark Offi ce begins its ex-

istence as the Kaiserliche Patentamt. Founded in Berlin, the authority has 

been located in Munich since .

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Telegraph lines to India and America 

As early as 1856, Werner von Siemens had formed the intention to 

extend the Russian telegraph lines across the Caucasus to India.

29

 

It would take years before the project took actual shape. In the 

meantime, the Siemens brothers did indeed turn their attention 

to the Caucasus, where the company got contracts to build local 

telegraph lines. Werner and Carl established a branch offi ce in the 

Georgian capital of Tbilisi, and in 1860 placed it under the man-

agement of their 27-year-old brother Walter. Four years later, on 

his recommendation, the brothers invested a rather large amount 

of capital in the Caucasus by acquiring a copper mine in Kedabeg 

as a “private business”. But expectations that the mine would 

prove a profi table investment were long in reaching fulfi llment. 

Yet even though Kedabeg caused substantial losses, Werner saw it 

as another family company that he wanted to keep fi rmly in hand 

as “an indestructible item of family property”.

30

 A few years later, 

Walter was followed to Tbilisi by the youngest brother, Otto. Otto 

established a rather large oil business in the Caucasus for the 

fi rm’s branch there. 

The Indo-European telegraph line

In 1865 the Siemens brothers found the opportunity had arrived 

to attack the project of a line to India. It would run from London, 

across the North Sea to Emden in Germany, then across Prussia, 

Poland, Southern Russia and the Caucasus to Tehran.

31

 From 

there, it could connect with an existing line of Britain’s India 

Telegraph Department, which led on to Karachi and further to 

Calcutta. The necessary concessions from the governments in Lon-

don, Berlin, St. Petersburg and Tehran were gradually obtained, 

in negotiations that were sometimes protracted. Here it proved to 

be an advantage that the Siemens brothers and their companies 

were established multinationally. William conducted negotiations 

in London, Werner in Berlin, Carl in St. Petersburg and Walter in 

Tehran. To raise the necessary capital, William and Carl urged 

their brother Werner to found a stock corporation in London. 

Werner was uncomfortable with the idea. He had a distinct aver-

sion to stock companies. But his brothers won out. In the nego-

tiations to found the Indo-European Telegraph Co. Ltd. in Lon-

don, the young lawyer Georg von Siemens – only son of Werner’s 

cousin and former investor, Johann Georg Siemens – proved his 

mettle.

32

 

In the spring of 1868, Siemens & Halske began building the 

line under a contract for the Indo-European Telegraph Co. Work 

was carried out in three segments from the Prussian-Russian bor-

der to Tehran. Existing lines could be used between London and 

the border between Prussia and Russia. Shortly after work began, 

Walter Siemens died in a tragic accident in Tbilisi, and Werner 

appointed youngest brother Otto as the new head of the branch. 

Since the Persian concession had to be renegotiated, he sent Georg 

von Siemens, now general counsel for Siemens & Halske, to Teh-

ran. The negotiations took nine months. During that period, en-

gineer Ernst Höltzer pursued further work on the Persian seg-

ment.

33

Even before the Indo-European telegraph line had been com-

pleted, Werner learned that a well-fi nanced company headed by 

Scottish businessman John Pender was laying a submarine cable 

1864  

Once the Kedabeg copper mine has been acquired, it takes considerable 

effort to make the business profi table. The copper business does not begin 

showing a profi t until the late s.

1870  

Georg von Siemens leaves Siemens & Halske to become one of the 

founding directors of Deutsche Bank. He heads the bank for  years, and 

is raised to the nobility in . 

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through the Red Sea to India. In the competitive bidding, Pender’s 

British Indian Submarine Telegraph Company won by a hair. When 

the Indo-European telegraph line opened on April 12, 1870, it was 

able to send a telegram from London to Calcutta, some 11,000 kilo-

meters away, in only 28 minutes. That set a new standard for tele-

graphic traffi c to India. Pender, for his part, began operations in 

June 1870 on a continuous submarine cable from London to India. 

The Siemens brothers realized that submarine cable technology 

had now reached maturity and would dominate the future. The 

Indo-European telegraph line had earned them a succès d’estime, 

but only a major submarine cable project would put them among 

the global players in the sector. 

Adventure in the Atlantic 

Of all the Siemens brothers, it was Carl most of all who urged 

laying an intercontinental submarine cable. He had taken over 

the management of Siemens Brothers in London in 1869. After a 

good deal of vacillation, the brothers decided to initiate a transat-

lantic project of their own, with the aim of breaking John Pender’s 

monopoly – the “Cable King” controlled the three existing trans-

atlantic lines. Because he charged high prices, there was great in-

terest in Europe and the USA in establishing new connections that 

would be independent from him. In March 1873, the Siemens broth-

ers founded a special company in London for their new major 

project: Direct United States Cable Co. Ltd. The stock of the new 

company was placed with the support of Deutsche Bank, where 

Georg von Siemens, Werner’s former general counsel, now sat on 

the board of directors. Since Siemens Brothers had learned from 

its past mistakes, William Siemens commissioned a shipyard to 

build a professionally equipped cable ship, which was christened 

the Faraday in February 1874.

34

 

Werner von Siemens stayed in the background during the wea-

risome, risky execution of the transatlantic project. The cable-lay-

ing was supervised by his brother Carl and the engineer Ludwig 

Löffl er. On May 16, 1874, the Faraday sailed off toward the North 

American coast to begin laying the cable from there. On July 2, the 

Reuters news agency reported that the ship had sunk off Halifax, 

Nova Scotia. Fortunately, this soon turned out to be a deliberately 

planted false report. The Siemens brothers now knew that in this 

project they would have to contend not just with the Atlantic, but 

with powerful antagonists. 

The project repeatedly faced potential disaster because the cable 

broke or was lost. It took three tries before the line could fi nally 

Route of the Indo-European 

telegraph line, 1870

1869  

John Pender founds the British Indian Submarine Telegraph Company – 

one of a total of  telegraph companies included in the “Cable King’s” empire.

1866  

American entrepreneur Cyrus W. Field lays the fi rst permanent 

transatlantic cable, between Newfoundland and Ireland, for John Pender’s 

Anglo-American Telegraph Company.

London

Emden

Berlin

Warsaw

Odessa

Kerch

Tbilisi

Tehran

Bushere

Karachi

Agra

Calcutta

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