Frederick Ebenezer Baines CB (10 November 1832 – 4 July 1911) was an English post office employee, known as a promoter of the post-office telegraph system.
Educated at private schools, he constructed and manipulated telegraphic apparatus by age 14, helped by his uncle Edward Cowper, and an elder brother, G. L. Baines.
[1] In 1875 Baines was made surveyor-general for telegraph business, and in 1878, with a view to decreasing the danger of invasion and increasing the efficiency of the coastguard service, he proposed the establishment of telegraphic communication around the sea-coast of the British Isles, to be worked by the coastguard under the control and supervision of the Post Office.
[1] In 1882 Baines was made inspector-general of mails and assistant secretary in the Post Office under Sir Arthur Blackwood.
He organised the parcel post service, introduced by Henry Fawcett in 1883, extending the system subsequently to all British colonies and most European countries.
He also published On the Track of the Mail Coach (1896), and contributed an article on the post-office to James Samuelson's The Civilisation of Our Day (1896).