Abstract
WILLIAM HENRY PREECE, the distinguished electrician, was born at Bryn Helen, Carnarvon, on February 15, 1834. Educated at King's College School and King's College, London, he came under the influence of Faraday at the Royal Institution and, deciding to become an electrician, in 1852 he entered the office of Edwin Clark. The following year he was appointed a junior engineer on the staff of the Electric and International Telegraph Co. and afterwards was telegraph engineer of the Channel Islands Telegraph Co. and the London and Southwestern Railway Co., introducing many improvements in railway signalling. In 1870 he joined the staff of the Post Office, becoming in 1892 the engineer-in-chief, a position he held until 1899. His work in telephony began in 1877 and it was he who brought to England the Bell telephone with which Kelvin and Haughton gave an amusing demonstration at the Plymouth meeting of the British Association that year. As much scepticism existed regarding the capacity of the telephone, Preece arranged for the transmission of the notes of a bugle from Southampton to the Royal Institution during a lecture he delivered. A large and distinguished audience was present and at the appropriate moment Preece asked Tennyson to listen at the telephone. After doing so for a few moments, the poet remarked gruffly, “I hear nothing.” Preece, catching up the telephone, after adopting a listening attitude, said, “I can hear, ‘The Campbells are Coming’”, and then proceeded with his lecture, none in the audience realising that the bugler had mistaken the date, and that Preece himself, like Tennyson, had heard nothing.
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Sir William Preece (1834—1913). Nature 133, 204 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133204a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133204a0