Introduction Chapter 1 Origins, childhood, and youth A family with a bourgeois heritage - Idyllic childhood and troubled youth - School years Chapter 2 Setting the course early on The young lieutenant - The tragedy of Menzendorf - Separate paths for the orphans Chapter 3 The damned money Initial experiments - Invention speculation - Legal guardian for three brothers Chapter 4 Halske's Workshop To bet it all - The first Siemens pointer telegraph - The founding of the company Chapter 5 Telegraph lines for Prussia In times of revolution and war - The first long-distance lines - Unsuccessful abroad - The Nottebohm crisis Chapter 6 Family genius The band of brothers - Achieving love through reason - Marriage and a move - Russia or France? - Crimean War boom Chapter 7 In the shadows Mathilde's illness - In search of new fields of business - Difficult beginnings in London - Mathilde's death Chapter 8 Headed for a great time For a unified and powerful Germany - A new love - The dynamo machine - To fade away or globalize Chapter 9 Megaprojects The Indo-European Telegraph Line - Private business and family matters - Transatlantic cables - Siemens Brothers & Co. Ltd. Chapter 10 At the zenith The businessman and his principles - Lobbyist for patent protection - Family life with Antonie - New times: Telephones and electric lighting - The first electric railways Chapter 11 To sustain the position achieved Challenged by the Edison system - Berlin versus London - The transition to a major enterprise Chapter 12 The legacy The next generation - A promoter of research - Ennobled against his will - The final years Focused and determined in a time of change - a summary Appendices Notes - Primary sources and bibliography - Image credits - Index of names - Index of places