Elmo N. Pickerill (1885-1968) was a wireless telegraphy enthusiast in the first decades of the twentieth century who later worked for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). During World War I, he served in the United States Army Signal Corps as a radio instructor in 1917 and then joined the Army Air Service in 1918. Pickerill joined RCA in 1920 and became the chief pilot of the aviation division in 1928. He retired from RCA in 1950.
Beginning in the 1930s, Pickerill asserted that he was unofficially the first person to receive and transmit radio signals from an airplane to a ground station. Recent research casts this claim into doubt.
The collection contains correspondence, pamphlets, periodicals, clippings, books, memorabilia, photographs, and other papers relating to the early history of radio broadcasting and Pickerill's contributions to the broadcasting industry. The collection includes material about Lee de Forest, Guglielmo Marconi, David Sarnoff, and other broadcast pioneers. The bulk of the papers date from the early 1920s to the 1950s.
