Peter Pendleton Eckersley

Peter Pendleton Eckersley (6 January 189218 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. Early life 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. He attended Manchester Municipal College of Technology in 1912. He joined the Royal Flying Corps as a wireless equipment officer in 1915, where he obtained the rank of captain. He was stationed mainly in Egypt and at Salonika. Later in the War, he was sent to the Wireless Experimental Station at Biggin Hill where he conducted experimental work on duplex telephony for aircraft. He Joined Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Co as the Head of the Experimental Section, Aircraft Department where he designed the Croydon Airport ground station transmitter.