Patented inventions are the foundation of Siemens’ success
Company founder and famous inventor Werner von Siemens shaped Siemens as a firm that aims for technological leadership. “I believe that one of the main reasons why our factories are flourishing is that most of what they produce is based on our own inventions,” he once said. Werner von Siemens was very much occupied by the issue of patents. In 1876 he even published a paper in which he explained why it was necessary for Germany to introduce a national patent law, as the only patent laws in existence at that time were those of the individual German states. Such a law was passed the following year, accompanied by the establishment of the Reichspatentamt (German Patent Office).
- Werner von Siemens actually registered a patent in the state of Prussia for an easily operated pointer telegraph just one week after founding his company in October 1847. This invention made it possible to send messages over great distances.
- Siemens’ dynamo patent in 1866 ushered in the age of large-scale electrical power generation, which also played a major role in the advent of electrical engineering.
- The invention of the electric railroad and the tantalum lamp were the driving forces behind the further development of mass mobility and electric lighting systems.
- The traffic light control system patented by Siemens & Halske in 1928 monitored the electric circuits in multi-colored traffic light lamps and created the basis for today’s complex traffic guidance systems.
- Most of the silicon production techniques for semiconductors are based on a Siemens patent from 1953 for producing the purest silicon. Other inventions in the last 60 years include Simatic (the foundation of industrial automation), thyristors (used as high-performance power network switches), and EWSD (a rapid digital telephone switching system). All pregnant women today are familiar with the result of a patent registered in the 1960s for real-time ultrasound.
- Key patents have been registered in recent years for new computer and magnetic resonance tomography procedures, energy-saving and resource-conserving industrial processes, a completely new bogie and drive system for trains, and innovative power plant concepts that enable CO2 separation.
- Ideally, one patent will benefit several different fields. One of the best recent examples of this is the invention of a procedure for rapidly registering the three-dimensional shape of objects. This technique is now being used in security systems (for 3D face recognition), industry (for chassis calibration in vehicle assembly), power engineering (for examining turbine blades), and the medical sector (for measuring in-ear hearing aids).