Sir William Henry Preece (1834-1913) was born in Caernarfon, Wales. He became Engineer-in-Chief of the British General Post Office in 1892. He had a long-standing rivalry with Oliver Heaviside over his traditional ideas about electricity (derisively referred to as "the drain-pipe theory" by Heaviside, because Preece always thought of electricity as analogous to water, and never understood James Clerk Maxwell's advances).

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