It's that time of year again: the 56th Annual Shareholders' Meeting of Siemens AG will take place on February 10, 2022. What started after World War II in Frankfurt am Main with about 50 people is today an event for thousands of guests. As in the previous year, due to the pandemic the Annual Shareholders' Meeting will take place virtually. Join us on an exciting journey through the history of this annual event. 

In early December 1866, Werner von Siemens reported on experiments with his new dynamo machine to his brother William, looking at the commercial potential of the invention.  And he was right: With this machine, Werner von Siemens laid the foundations for a new age of electricity. The dynamo machine that the company developed to market maturity in the years and decades after Werner’s discovery was the prerequisite for putting electricity to use in everyday life. By providing an economical way to turn mechanical energy into electrical energy, it marked the beginning of the electrification of the world. 

Siemens & Halske hired its first apprentice in 1870, at its plant on Markgrafenstrasse in Berlin. The establishment of a systematic training system was not tackled until a few decades later: the in-house school of Siemens & Halske opened to 77 apprentices on November 1, 1906. It still makes this company school – which exists to this day – one of the oldest vocational schools in Germany. Find out more about how the apprenticeship system evolved at Siemens.

The history of the world’s fairs mirrors the development of industrial-technological civilization. As a global powerhouse in electrical engineering, Siemens has been participating regularly in these exhibitions of superlatives ever since 1851. On the occasion of the "Expo 2020" in Dubai, which, due to the pandemic, runs from October 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022, the Siemens Historical Institute has compiled interesting stories and impressive pictures on Siemens’ most important world’s fair exhibits.