John M. M. Munro

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.

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.