Catalogue description Private Collections: Papers of and relating to W H Preece

Sir William Henry Preece (1834-1913) was born at Caernarvon, on 15 February 1834. He was educated at King's College, London, and received training in electrical engineering at the Royal Institution under Michael Faraday. In 1853, he joined the Electric and International Telegraph Company, becoming superintendent of its southern district in 1856. From 1858 to 1862, he was engineer to the Channel Islands Telegraph Company and, in 1870, when the Post Office took over the private telegraph companies, he transferred to the Post Office with the rank of Divisional Engineer for the southern district of the Post Office telegraphic system. In 1877 he was appointed Chief Electrician and, in 1892, Engineer-in-Chief. He retired from the Post Office in 1899 but continued to act as Consulting Engineer to the Post Office and the Colonies until 1904.

Preece was made CB in 1894 and created KCB in 1899. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1881 and president of the Institution of Civil Engineers (1898-1899). He was one of the founding members of the Society of Telegraph Engineers in 1871 (which later became the Institution of Electrical Engineers); he served as President of the Institution in 1880.

The scientific field explored by Preece in the course of his career was extremely wide and covered telegraphy, telephony and radio-telegraphic communication. He was responsible for many improvements and inventions in telegraphic work, and he also worked on railway signalling, doing much to secure the safe working of the railways. During his service in the Post Office, Preece was closely concerned with the development of the telephone in the United Kingdom, and he was one of the pioneers of wireless telegraphy. He encouraged Guglielmo Marconi in his experiments into wireless telegraphy, securing for him in 1896 the assistance of the Post Office.