The Philip B. Petersen Collection Broadcast April 7, 1989

     At the turn of the century, two great achievements occurred.  Marconi received the first wireless signals across the Atlantic Ocean and Wilbur and Orville Wright made their first successful powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
     Since that time, both of these discoveries have been practically locked in step as each decade shows great advances in their further development.  Up until 1910, these great advances in science were going their separate ways.  Wireless radio was constantly covering greater distances and so was the Wright brothers' airplane.
     Elmo Neale Pickerill, a young enthusiastic radio amateur, known as Pick, lived in Mineola, Long Island, New York and was also interested in flying.  There was much aircraft experimental activity going on and one day in 1909, Pick met Orville Wright and he asked if he could rent one of his airplanes with a pilot so that he could go aloft to conduct experiments with his wireless apparatus.  Orville Wright scoffed at the idea, telling Pick, "There is no airplane with sufficient power to fly two men plus a load of wireless equipment - it just couldn't get off the ground!"  After hearing Orville Wright make that remark, Pick still was determined to take his wireless set in the aircraft even if he had to fly it himself.  He then made arrangements for flying lessons with the brothers Orville and Wilber Wright.
     A few months later, on August the 4th in 1910, Elmo Neale Pickerill made his historic flight that took him on a round trip from Mineola, Long Island, New York to Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, non-stop in a Model B Wright Biplane.  The flight was made at an altitude of only 1000 feet.  During the flight, he established communications, using a push-button telegraph key, with seven different stations.  Three of them were wireless stations aboard ships in the New York area; two were coastal stations, a station in New York City, and a portable station in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn.  This was the very beginning of aviation radio communications.
     Since Pick's historic flight on August the 4th, 1910, aircraft electronics developments have made many giant steps in aviation.  Nowadays, there is a multiplicity of specialized radio electronics, so much so that all aircraft radio electronics comes under the general description of avionics.  These equipments include communications, navigation, radar and landing systems, to name a very few.  These avionics equipments have, without a doubt, greatly improved the all-weather capability, performance and safety of flying for all of us.
     Elmo Neale Pickerill accomplished many more achievements in communications working with other notable inventors and scientists of his day before he died on January 10th in 1968.  To honor him, the Society of Wireless Pioneers named their Northeast Chapter The Elmo Neale Pickerill Chapter.  He was the Father of Aviation Communication Electronics.

April 7, 1989

** Broadcasts recordings preserved and presented here by Mr. Robert Buss and Mr. Bernie Ricciardi, Phil's friends and fellow Marconi Chapter 138 QCWA members **

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