Werner von Siemens

Werner von Siemens was a German electrical engineer and industrialist who in 1866 discovered the dynamo-electric principle, showing that a generator could produce and sustain its own magnetic field through self-excitation rather than requiring an external permanent magnet, a discovery that made large-scale, efficient electricity generation practical for the first time. He founded the company that became Siemens, building it into one of Europes leading electrical engineering and telegraphy firms and supplying dynamos, cables and electrical equipment across the expanding industrial economies of the nineteenth century. His self-exciting dynamo directly enabled the electric power stations and lighting systems built in the following decades, moving electricity generation from small experimental demonstrations toward an industrial-scale technology. Siemens is remembered as one of the founding figures of the modern electrical power and electrical engineering industries.