Siemens & Halske
defunct electrical equipment and engine manufacturer
Siemens & Halske AG (or Siemens-Halske) was a German electrical engineering company that later became part of Siemens. It was founded on 12 October 1847 as Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske. The company was located in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
History
After its foundation in 1847, Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske specialised in manufacturing electrical telegraphs according to Charles Wheatstone's patent of 1837. In 1848, the company constructed one of the first European telegraph lines from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main. Siemens & Halske was not alone in the realm of electrical engineering. In 1887, Emil Rathenau had established Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), which became a long-time rival.
In 1881, Siemens & Halske built the Gross-Lichterfelde Tramway, the world's first electric streetcar line, in the southwestern Lichterfelde suburb of Berlin, followed by the Mödling and Hinterbrühl Tram near Vienna, the first electrical interurban tram in Austria-Hungary. 1882 saw the opening of the experimental "Elektromote" track, an early trolleybus concept in the Berlin suburb of Halensee. The rising popularity of telegraphs and electrical tramways, as well as in generators and electric motors, ensured steady growth for Siemens & Halske.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Siemens & Halske” as defunct electrical equipment and engine manufacturer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2290583. VIAF identifies the subject as 138283177. The Library of Congress control number is n50075212. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1847, 1837, 1848 and 1887.
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This entry incorporates text from “Siemens & Halske” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.