William Aitken was born in St Andrews, Scotland, in 1863. He attended Madras College in St Andrews. Throughout his career in electrical engineering he specialised in telephony. In 1903 he was Chief of the Technical Staff at the National Telephone Company Ltd.;1913 he was an Engineer at the Liverpool Works of British Insulated Ltd.; in 1920 he was a Technical Adviser for Relay Automatic Telephone Ltd., and he was retained by the Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Company Ltd. and Automatic Electric Company.

He was the inventor of the subject matter of about 100 patents and published a number of books about the telephone. He was also a Member of the Institution of Electric Engineers and an Associate of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

William Aitken died in Muswell Hill, London, in 1957.