Sir William Henry Preece - Biography, References and external articles

Electrical engineer, born in Bryn Helen, Gwynedd, NW Wales, UK. He studied at the Royal Institution, London, and was attached to the Post Office (1870), where he became engineer-in-chief and finally consulting engineer. A pioneer of wireless telegraphy and telephony, he also improved the system of railway signalling, and introduced the first telephones to Great Britain.

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Sir William Henry Preece (1834-1913) was a Welsh electrical engineer and inventor.

Biography

Preece was born in Caernarfon (Gwynedd), Wales.

Preece also developed a wireless telegraphy and telephony system also in 1892. Preece developed a telephone system and implemented it in England. In 1885, Preece and Arthur West Heaviside (Oliver Heaviside's brother) experimented with parallel telegraph lines and an unwired telephone receiver, discovering radio induction (later identified with the effects of crosstalk). Preece gained financial assistance from the Post Office to help expand Marconi's work. Preece believed that the Earth’s magnetic field was critical in the propagation of radio waves over long distances. It was derisively referred to as "the drain-pipe theory" by Heaviside, because Preece presented the analogy of electricity and water for thought experiments.

Preece once stated, conveying setiments which were later made by Edwin Armstrong,

True theory does not require the abstruse language of mathematics to make it clear and to render it acceptable [...] All that is solid and substantial in science and usefully applied in practice, have been made clear by relegating mathematic symbols to their proper store place --- the study. - Preece's inaugural speech as president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1893

References and external articles

Russell Naughton , "Adventures in CyberSound: Preece, William Henry". Sir William Henry Preece, Groundbreakers . Oil on canvas painting by Beatrice Bright of Sir William Preece

(1834-1913).