Siemens AG (German pronunciation: [ˈziːməns] or [-mɛns]) is a German multinational company. It is focused on industrial automation, building automation, rail transport and health technology. Siemens is the largest engineering company in Europe, and holds the position of global market leader in industrial AI, automation, and industrial software. The origins of the conglomerate can be traced back to 1847 to the Telegraphen Bau-Anstalt von Siemens & Halske established in Berlin by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske. In 1966, the present-day corporation emerged from the merger of three companies: Siemens & Halske, Siemens-Schuckert, and Siemens-Reiniger-Werke. Today headquartered in Munich and Berlin, Siemens and its subsidiaries employ approximately 320,000 people worldwide and reported a global revenue of around €78 billion in 2023. The company is a component of the DAX and Euro Stoxx 50 stock market indices. As of December 2023, Siemens is the second largest German company by market capitalization. As of 2023, the principal divisions of Siemens are Digital Industries, Smart Infrastructure, Mobility, and Financial Services, with Siemens Mobility operating as an independent entity. Major business divisions that were once part of Siemens before being spun off include semiconductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies (1999), Siemens Mobile (2005), Gigaset Communications (2008), the photonics business Osram (2013), Siemens Healthineers (2017), and Siemens Energy (2020).
History
1847 to 1901
Siemens & Halske was founded by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske on 1 October 1847. Based on the telegraph, their invention used a needle to point to the sequence of letters, instead of using Morse code. The company, then called Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske, opened its first workshop on 12 October. In 1848, the company built the first long-distance telegraph line in Europe: 500 km from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main. In 1850, the founder's younger brother, Carl Wilhelm Siemens, later Sir William Siemens, started to represent the company in London. The London agency became a branch office in 1858. In the 1850s, the company was involved in building long-distance telegraph networks in Russia. In 1855, a company branch headed by another brother, Carl Heinrich von Siemens, opened in St Petersburg, Russia. In 1867, Siemens completed the monumental Indo-European telegraph line stretching over 11,000 km from London to Calcutta.
In 1867, Werner von Siemens described a dynamo without permanent magnets.
A similar system was also independently invented by Ányos Jedlik and Charles Wheatstone, but Siemens became the first company to build such devices. In 1881, a Siemens AC Alternator driven by a watermill was used to power the world's second to first electric street lighting in the town of Godalming, United Kingdom. The company continued to grow and diversified into electric trains and light bulbs. In 1885, Siemens sold one of its generators to George Westinghouse, thereby enabling Westinghouse to begin experimenting with AC networks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1887, Siemens opened its first office in Japan. In 1890, the founder retired and left the running of the company to his brother Carl and sons Arnold and Wilhelm. In 1892, Siemens was contracted to construct the Hobart electric tramway in Tasmania, Australia, as it increased its markets. The system opened in 1893 and became the first complete electric tram network in the Southern Hemisphere.
1901 to 1933
Siemens & Halske (S & H) was incorporated in 1897 and then merged parts of its activities with Schuckert & Co., Nuremberg, in 1903 to become Siemens-Schuckert. In 1907, Siemens (Siemens & Halske and Siemens-Schuckert) had 34,324 employees and was the seventh-largest company in the German empire by number of employees. (see List of German companies by employees in 1907) In 1919, S & H and two other companies jointly formed the Osram lightbulb company.
During the 1920s and 1930s, S & H started to manufacture radios, television sets, and electron microscopes. In 1932, Reiniger, Gebbert & Schall (Erlangen), Phönix AG (Rudolstadt) and Siemens-Reiniger-Veifa mbH (Berlin) merged to form the Siemens-Reiniger-Werke AG (SRW), the third of the so-called parent companies that merged in 1966 to form the present-day Siemens AG. In the 1920s, Siemens constructed the Ardnacrusha Hydro Power station on the River Shannon in the then Irish Free State, and it was a world first for its design. The company is remembered for its desire to raise the wages of its underpaid workers, only to be overruled by the Cumann na nGaedheal government.
1933 to 1945
Siemens (at the time: Siemens-Schuckert) exploited the forced labour of deported people in extermination camps. The company owned a plant in Auschwitz concentration camp.
Siemens exploited the forced labour of women deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp; a Siemens factory was located in front of the camp. During the final years of World War II, numerous plants and factories in Berlin and other major cities were destroyed by Allied air raids. To prevent further losses, manufacturing was therefore moved to alternative places and regions not affected by the air war. The goal was to secure continued production of important war-related and everyday goods. According to records, Siemens was operating almost 400 alternative or relocated manufacturing plants at the end of 1944 and in early 1945. In 1972, Siemens sued German satirist F.C. Delius for his satirical history of the company, Unsere Siemens-Welt, and it was determined much of the book contained false claims although the trial itself publicized Siemens's history in Nazi Germany. The company supplied electrical parts to Nazi concentration camps and death camps. The factories had poor working conditions, where malnutrition and death were common. Also, the scholarship has shown that the camp factories were created, run, and supplied by the SS, in conjunction with company officials, sometimes high-level officials.
1945 to 2001 In the 1950s, and from its new base in Bavaria, S&H started to manufacture computers, semiconductor devices, washing machines, and pacemakers. In 1966, Siemens & Halske (S&H, founded in 1847), Siemens-Schuckertwerke (SSW, founded in 1903) and Siemens-Reiniger-Werke (SRW, founded in 1932) merged to form Siemens AG. In 1969, Siemens formed Kraftwerk Union with AEG by pooling their nuclear power businesses.
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