The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.
Sir William Preece
Sir William Henry Preece was a Welsh electrical engineer and inventor. Preece relied on experiments and physical reasoning in his life's work. Upon his retirement from the Post Office in 1899, Preece was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 1899 Birthday Honours. That same year, he was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society.