Alexander Siemens

Alexander Siemens (22 January 1847 – 16 February 1928) was a German electrical engineer.

Siemens was born in Hanover, then a kingdom within the German Confederation, to Gustav and Sophie Siemens of the Siemens family, an old family of Goslar which can be traced back to 1384. His father was a judge and a cousin of William Siemens the famous electrical engineer. He was educated in Hanover and moved to Woolwich, London in 1867 to work at the Siemens Brothers factory. He returned to the German Confederation in 1868 to study at the University of Berlin, interrupting his studies there to lay telegraph cables in the Middle East. These cables were to form part of the Indo-European Telegraph and much of the work was undertaken by Siemens Brothers. His first inaugural address was an analysis of the Electric Lighting Acts of 1882 and 1888, his second advocating a wider use of the metric system. In 1875, he sailed aboard the cable ship Faraday, laying several cables across the North Atlantic. In between voyages he built several furnaces for companies in the US and Canada. Returning to the UK in 1877 he became a British citizen through naturalization in 1878. He was appointed the manager of the electric lighting division of Siemens Brothers in 1879 and was involved in the manufacture of generators, arc lamps and cables for the electric industry.

In retirement he lived at Westover Hall, Milford-on-Sea, Hampshire, where he died, from heart failure, on 16 February 1928.