Peter Eckersley (engineer)

Captain Peter Pendleton Eckersley (PP Eckersley, 6 January 1892 – 18 March 1963) was a pioneer of British broadcasting, the first Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Company Limited from 1922 to 1927 and Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Corporation until 1929. Some sources incorrectly give his middle name as Prothero.

Peter Eckersley was born in Puebla, Mexico, in 1892. His father, Alfred (d. 1895 of yellow fever), was a railway engineer then in charge of building the Grand Mexican Railway. His elder brother was the physicist Thomas Eckersley; and his cousin, Aldous Huxley. In the 1911 census, he is recorded as a resident of the Bedales School-Co-Educational Proprietary Boarding School, Petersfield, Hampshire.

By 1920 Eckersley had become an announcer, broadcaster (he recited poetry and sang songs) and engineer of 2MT, the first licensed radio station in Britain, located in Writtle, near Chelmsford, Essex, England, where Guglielmo Marconi had built his wireless telegraphy factories. He was the first Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Company Limited from 1922 to 1927 and then Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Between World War I and World War II the General Electric Company of the United States became a giant cartel which had growing commercial interests in Britain and several not entirely successful steps were undertaken to prevent the Americanisation of Britain. Links between the UK and USA had been pioneered by Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company. During World War I General Electric, with help from the US Navy, had taken over the ship-to-shore radio business Marconi had established in America. In 1919 this was transferred to a new GE subsidiary, the Radio Corporation of America. The British military declared a two years' moratorium on further commercial radio experiments by Guglielmo Marconi's employees.

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