Beautifully engraved Certificate from the "Siemens" Elektrische Betriebe issued in 1901-1913. This historic document has an ornate border around it with the company's name printed in fancy print. It is in a very decorative Art Nouveau design and was issued from Berlin. This item is hand signed by the company's officers over 90 years old. Early Siemens certificates are diffucult to find.
Certificate Vignette In Siemens history, everything starts with its founder, Werner von Siemens. He was born in 1816 in a small village in northern Germany, and his entire life was dedicated to invention and innovation. 1847 Pointer Telegraph In his day, people communicated over long distances by optical telegraphy, a technology that was not very user-friendly. It worked, for example, only in daylight, only over short distances, only in clear weather. Werner von Siemens' first great invention was the pointer telegraph. It had great advantages over optical telegraphy and even over traditional Morse code, which it eventually made obsolete. It worked day or night, in any kind of weather, using real letters, not coded signs. 1847 First Workshop Von Siemens anticipated strong demand for his pointer telegraph, so he founded a company in Berlin to manufacture them. By modern definitions, we could call it a kind of garage. But it was a real start-up company, just as we know them today. 1851 Fire Alarm Network In 1851, Siemens installed the world's first network...for fire alarms. Terminals showed the location of fires. So you could say Siemens has been in the network business for at least 146 years. 1853 Russian Telegraph Line In 1853, Siemens laid the first long-distance telegraph line, in Russia, almost 6,000 miles long. Another cable-laying project through the Mediterranean Sea to North Africa was so successful that the British government decided that all similar projects would be carried out only by Siemens. 1870 Indo Line The next great challenge was a telegraph line from London to Calcutta, stretching more than 9,000 miles. Could it have been the first intercontinental Information Highway? After the line went into service in 1870, the Siemens company became famous as a general contractor for worldwide telecommunications. 1874 The Faraday Because of this accomplishment, Siemens designed the "Faraday" cablelaying ship. It dropped the first trans-Atlantic cable in 1874. 1877 First Phone Siemens entered the telephone business in 1877, constructing an instrument patterned after the concepts of Alexander Graham Bell. Because the Siemens phones had better magnets, however, they were louder and could transmit over longer distances. 1881 Drop Switch Board Siemens shipped its first telephone switch in 1881. And business has been booming ever since... 1931 Telex Office ...from the predecessor to the fax machine in 1931... 1980 EWSD Switch ...to the first digital public switch in the 1980's... now Hicom 300 E ...through today's first ISDN PBX, Hicom, Siemens' global platform