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
AppendicesNotes - Primary sources and bibliography - Image credits - Index of names - Index of places