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2026-10-05 IET Archives (catalogue and blog)

Priority 4 (historical record) and 1 (own work: notebooks, letters). Claim 3 (Preece block), claim 5, records that go quiet.

Searched

Found (catalogue records; descriptions are the archive's, contents not seen)

  1. UK0108 SC MSS 022/VII/526, "Draft reply from Preece to Kelvin", n.d., 2 pp. [web] https://iet.adlibhosting.com/Details/archive/110008739 : "Pencil draft letter, mentioning Heaviside and his dreadful twaddle, and calculating Kelvin's formula to show that he is correct and Heaviside is wrong, as Heaviside proves Preece's point. He gives more examples of how he knows this works through everyday experience, and criticises 'drawing room philosophers' like Oliver Heaviside and Sylvanus Thompson." This is Preece's own stated position (a party with an institutional and reputational stake), in his own papers: the primary record the arbiter said was missing for "engineering judgement or reputation defence".
  2. UK0108 SC MSS 022/VII/535, Letter Kelvin to Preece, 12 July 1887, 4 pp. [web] https://iet.adlibhosting.com/Details/archive/110008793 : from Netherhall, Largs, "on a footnote to a Heaviside article in the Philosophical Magazine which should not have appeared as it was so ill natured [presumably anti-Preece]" (the bracket is the cataloguer's). Kelvin, who later praised Heaviside (1889), here sides with Preece on tone, in the month of the dispute.
  3. UK0108 SC MSS 005/I/6/43, C. A. Stevenson correspondence, 1897-1921, 10 pieces [web] https://iet.adlibhosting.com/Details/archive/110007369 : letters from Charles A. Stevenson (Northern Lighthouse Board) on automatic coastal warning signalling "and of Heaviside's brother's career and being blocked by Preece".
  4. UK0108 SC MSS 005/I/2/057, Preece, "America Revisited - 1907", proof, with MS notes by Heaviside, 1908, 30 pp. [web] https://iet.adlibhosting.com/Details/archive/110005818 . Heaviside's annotations on Preece's account of US practice (US practice included loading coils) [the last point is memory, low].
  5. Other hits, not opened (time): a notebook description "There are occasional comments referring to his disputes with Sir William Preece and Lord Kelvin" (https://iet.adlibhosting.com/Details/archive/110000639); "Typed copy of report by Arthur West Heaviside probably made in 1936 by Sir Arthur Preece in connection with correspondence with The Times" (110008809); a Preece record "I have no faith in Lumsden's judgement" (110004478); a record incl. Heaviside's "On Duplex Telegraphy" in Preece papers (110005002).
  6. Collection structure (search snippet): SC MSS 005 Heaviside Collection, 3 parts; 005/I Primary collection, 6 parts; 005/I/1 Notebooks, 21 parts. Bruton (2018) footnote 18 identifies SC MSS 005/I/1/12, notebook 1886-1889, "Complete MS copy of S[elf] I[nduction] of W[ires]", with "notes on the fate of Part VIII and Part [IX?] which were declined by the Philosophical Magazine and blocked by Preece" (Bruton's description; see 2026-10-05-royalsocietypublishing.md). That notebook is the nearest thing to the "1887 manuscript" record.

Blog (IET archivist's account) [web] URL above

  • Preece, "then Engineer in Chief at the Post Office, opposed the idea, beginning a life-long animosity". (He became Engineer-in-Chief in 1892; in 1887 he was Electrician. Small dating slip in the blog [web: Bruton 2018].)
  • "in 1900 Professor Michael Idvorsky Pupin published a paper on the subject and patented his system. Pupin was later bought out by American Bell for over $400 000. Heaviside received nothing." Compare Wikipedia's $455,000 total and Hunt's $500,000: three different figures in three sources.
  • Quotes the 1902 Britannica sentence (matches the primary text read on archive.org). Says Kennelly "also suggested its existence in the same year"; Appleton demonstrated it in 1924.
  • Heaviside "expelled previously for not paying his membership fees" before the 1908 IEE honorary membership (Bruton dates the striking-off 1881).
  • Notebooks, correspondence and personal library (with "extensive marginal notes") are at IET: UK0108 SC MSS 005 and the Heaviside Library.

Bearing

Claim 3 / Open question 3: the IET holds both sides' papers. The Preece draft (item 1) is the first record found of Preece's own reasoning; reading it would show whether his objection rested on a calculation with Kelvin's (KR) formula, which is what the catalogue says. Next: request copies or visit; AIM25 retry for the full collection list.