John M. M. Munro

John Mackintosh Mackay Munro FRSE MIME MICE (1853-1925) was a Scottish businessman and electrical engineer.

Life

He was born in Glasgow in 1853 the son of David Munro, engineer, who had founded Munro & Anderson in 1840. The family lived at 55 Malta Street.[1] He was educated at Glasgow Academy then studied at Anderson's College.

In March 1880 he tried to set up a telephone exchange in Glasgow, but abandoned the project due to "patent difficulties".[2] If successful this would have been one of the first exchanges in Britain.

In 1894 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, James Thomson Bottomley, Magnus Maclean, and Alexander Galt.[3]

In 1906 he became Chairman of the Institute of Electrical Engineers.[4]

Up until 1910 he lived at Hawarden, 59 Partickhill Road then moved to Blythswood Square for his final years.[5] In that year, following the death of his father, he became Director and Partner in Anderson & Munro.

He died on 29 December 1925.

Family

He was father to Donald Smeaton Munro (b.1879), who also became an engineer and was involved in converting Edinburgh's gas lights to electricity.[6] His daughter Elsie Smeaton Munro (1880–1961) became a writer; and his son Ion was a diplomat and journalist, as well as a collector of rare books.

References
  1. Glasgow Post Office Directory 1853
  2. The Engineering Review vol 25
  3. Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 17 October 2017.
  4. Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical Engineers 1906
  5. Glasgow Post Office Directories 1909 and 1911
  6. Who's Who in Engineering J E Sears


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