Autograph letter signed by engineer William Henry Preece dated 1879

PREECE, Sir William Henry (1834-1913). Autograph Letter Signed to Charles Manby. Gothic Lodge, Wimbledon, 30 April 1879.
 
Single sheet on wove paper folded to form four pages, 100 x 160 mm, written on two sides. Very good.
 
A rare letter from the pioneering electrical engineer Sir William Henry Preece to his fellow engineer Charles Manby. A short social note thanking Manby for his kind note.
 
Sir William Henry Preece was one of Britain's foremost nineteenth-century electrical engineers, serving as Engineer-in-Chief of the General Post Office and playing a leading role in the development of the telephone and telegraph in Britain. A close associate of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, he was instrumental in introducing new communications technologies and was elected President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1895.
 
The recipient, Charles Manby (1804-1884), was Secretary of the Institution of Civil Engineers for nearly thirty years and one of the central figures in Victorian engineering, maintaining an extensive correspondence with many of the leading scientific and engineering minds of the age.