Siebe Gorman & Company Ltd was a British company that developed diving equipment and breathing equipment and worked on commercial diving and marine salvage projects. The company advertised itself as 'Submarine Engineers'. It was founded by Augustus Siebe , a German-born British engineer chiefly known for his contributions to diving equipment. Siebe plc started in the 1970s as a continuation of Siebe Gorman when Siebe Gorman started to take over other firms, to mean the new conglomerate to distinguish it from Siebe Gorman's original breathing apparatus and diving gear core business. Siebe plc was once one of the United Kingdom's largest engineering businesses. It was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but in 1999 it merged with BTR plc to form Invensys. Invensys was taken over by the French multinational Schneider Electric for £3.4 billion in January 2014. History 1788: Augustus Siebe was born in Saxony in Germany, named Christian Augustus Siebe. He was educated in Berlin and apprenticed to a brass founder. 1812: He served as an artillery officer at the Battle of Leipzig and narrowly escaped death. 1815: He served as an artillery officer in the Prussian army at the Battle of Waterloo. 1816: After that war he moved to London, England. He became a watchmaker, then gunmaker, then instrument maker, and settled at 5 Denmark Street in Soho, London, where he became an engineer. 1819: He started a business as a mechanical engineer at 145 High Holborn, London. He traded as Augustus Siebe and dropped the word "Christian" from his name. Down the years he produced various mechanical devices, not only diving gear. 1819: He married Susannah Gliddon (from Devon). 1819: He produced a breech-loading firearm. 1823: He was awarded a Vulcan medal for a screw tap for thread cutting. 1826: He moved to 5 Denmark Street, London, which he rented. 1830: His daughter Mary Siebe was born. The company, by then trading as Siebe Gorman, developed its first diving helmet. (Later, William Augustus Gorman (formerly O'Gorman) (an Irish sea captain) married Mary Siebe.) Start of involvement in making diving equipment 1830: The Deane brothers asked Siebe to make a variation of their smoke helmet design for underwater use. Later they turned to him to produce more helmets for diving operations. Expanding on improvements already made by another engineer, George Edwards, Siebe produced his own design; a helmet fitted to a full length watertight canvas diving