Private Collections: Papers of and relating to W H Preece

This series comprises papers relating to the career of Sir William Henry Preece, Post Office Engineer-in-Chief (1892-1899). It includes papers collected by Preece himself, and items relating to him which have been added to the collection. The papers cover his personal achievements in his career, such as his presidency of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, but also his official role, including, for example, letter books from his time as Engineer-in-Chief to the Post Office. The papers are predominantly concerned with developments in early telegraph and telephone systems but also cover his encouragement of Guglielmo Marconi in his experiments into wireless telegraphy and Preece's involvement in railway signalling developments.

Please see BT Archives online catalogue and The Postal Museum's online catalogue for some descriptions of individual records within the series.

The records in this series reflect a former arrangement and have since been re-catalogued. Please contact BT Archives https://www.bt.com/about/bt/our-history/bt-archives for more information.

Related records are held in the archives of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and GEC Marconi. Other material on Marconi's relationship with Preece and the Post Office can be found in: POST 88, POST 30

Catalogue entries below series level were removed from Discovery, The National Archives' online catalogue, in May 2017 because fuller descriptions were available in BT Archives online catalogue.

This series had previously been catalogued by the Post Office Archives as POST 106 . These references were altered to TCK 89 by BT Archives in 1999.

Subject to 30 year closure

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.