The company Siemens & Halske Telegraph Construction Company (German legal name: Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske) founded by Werner fon Siemens on 12 October 1847. Based on the telegraph , his invention used a needle to point to the sequence of letters, instead of using Morse code. In 1848, the company built the first long-distance telegraph line in Europe 500 km from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main  and by the early 1850s the company was involved in building long distance telegraph networks in Russia. In 1867, Siemens completed the monumental Indo-European telegraph line stretching over 11,000 km from London to Calcutta. In 1897, Siemens & Halske went public. During the first half of the 20th century, there were a series of mergers and divisions, which led to formation of three separate companies. First was the original company, Siemens & Halske, which focused on communications engineering; then the 1903-founded Siemens Schuckertwerke GmbH devoted to electric power engineering. Finally the 1932-founded Siemens Reiniger Werke specializing in electro-medical equipment. In 1966, through a major restructuring process, these main companies merged to form Siemens AG. The restructuring placed Siemens AG in a position to consolidate and diversify its operations, and be an integrated player in all domains: engineering, power generation, industry, rail systems, defense, and information & communications technology.