Reginald "Rex" Wailes OBE, FSA, F I Mech E (6 March 1901 – 7 January 1986) was an English engineer and historian who published widely on aspects of engineering history and industrial archaeology, particularly on windmills and watermills.
[1] In 1923, while serving his apprenticeship with Robey, an engineering firm in Lincoln, he was asked by the then president of the Newcomen Society to record windmills in Lincolnshire.
In this post he visited numerous mills in England and developed a reputation as the leading British authority on them, presenting more than thirty papers to the Newcomen Society on mill-related subjects.
He was also invited to report on mills overseas, notably in the United States, presenting a paper on the windmills of Long Island for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities in 1935.
From 1963 to 1971 he was the lead consultant to the Industrial Monuments Survey then being undertaken by the Ministry of Works in an effort to identify historic industrial sites which were worthy of preservation under the Town and Country Planning Acts.