Sir William Henry Preece | |
|---|---|
 Sir William Henry Preece | |
| Born | 15 February 1834 Caernarfon,Gwynedd, Wales |
| Died | 6 November 1913(1913-11-06) (aged 79) |
| Education | King's College London |
| Engineering career | |
| Discipline | Civil,Electrical, |
| Institutions | British Association for the Advancement of Science (president, Section G),Institution of Civil Engineers (president),Institution of Electrical Engineers (president), Society of Telegraph Engineers (president) |
Sir William Henry PreeceKCB FRS (15 February 1834 – 6 November 1913) was aWelshelectrical engineer and inventor. Preece relied on experiments and physical reasoning in his life's work. Upon his retirement from thePost Office in 1899, Preece was made aKnight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the1899 Birthday Honours.[1] That same year, he was elected an International Member of theAmerican Philosophical Society.[2]
Preece was born inCaernarfon (Gwynedd), Wales. He was educated atKing's College School andKing's College London. Preece studied at the Royal Institution in London (Great Britain) underMichael Faraday. He later was the consulting engineer for the Post Office (1870s). He became Engineer-in-Chief of the British General Post Office in 1892. He developed several improvements in railroad signalling system that increased railway safety. Preece andOliver Lodge maintained a correspondence during this period. Upon Lodge's proposal of "loading coils" applied to submerged cables, Preece did not realise that "Earthing" would extend the distance and efficiency.
In 1889 Preece assembled a group of men atConiston Water in theLake District in Lancashire and succeeded in transmitting and receiving Morse radio signals over a distance of about 1 mile (1.6 km) across water.[3]
Preece also developed awireless telegraphy and telephony system in 1892. Preece developed a telephone system and implemented it in England. A similar telephone system was patented in the United States by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. In 1885, Preece andArthur West Heaviside (Oliver Heaviside's brother) experimented with parallel telegraph lines and an unwired telephone receiver, discovering radio induction (later identified with the effects ofcrosstalk).
Preece blocked publication of some of Arthur and Oliver Heaviside's work. There was a long history of animosity between Preece and Oliver Heaviside. Oliver considered Preece to be mathematically incompetent, an assessment supported by the biographerPaul J. Nahin: "Preece was a powerful government official, enormously ambitious, and in some remarkable ways, an utter blockhead." Preece's motivations in suppressing Heaviside's work were more to do with protecting Preece's own reputation and avoiding having to admit error than any perceived faults in Heaviside's work.[4]: xi–xvii, 162–183
In 1897, with Marconi radio experiments fromLavernock Point in south Wales to the island ofFlat Holm, Preece became one of Marconi's most ardent supporters. He made various efforts to supportGuglielmo Marconi in the wireless field. Preece gained financial assistance from the Post Office to help expand Marconi's work. Preece believed incorrectly that theEarth's magnetic field was critical in the propagation of radio waves over long distances.
He had a long-standing rivalry with Oliver Heaviside over his understanding of electricity. It was derisively referred to as "thedrain-pipe theory" by Heaviside, because Preece relied on an analogy between electricity and water forthought experiments. Reportedly, he rejected and never understoodJames Clerk Maxwell's advances tomathematical physics, and insisted that adding inductance to a telegraph line could only be detrimental, even while Maxwell's and Heaviside's theory and experiments showed that inductance could help.[5]
Preece once stated, conveying sentiments later expressed byEdwin 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 theInstitution of Electrical Engineers in 1893
Preece served as president of theInstitution of Civil Engineers between April 1898 and November 1899.[6]
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| Preceded by | President of theInstitution of Civil Engineers April 1898 – November 1899 | Succeeded by |
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