Finding Aids

Creed and Company Limited was originally founded as Creed, Bille & Company Limited by Frederick George Creed (1871-1957) and Harald Bille (1879-1916) in 1912 to manufacture and sell telegraphy equipment. In the early 1900s, Creed had invented several machines that facilitated the sending and receiving of Morse code messages. Much of Creed and Company's manufacturing capacity was in Croydon, London, England. These photographs show a group tour of the Creed and Company Limited plant in Croydon on October 14, 1954.

For over fifty years the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was one of the country's leading manufacturers and vendors of radios, phonographs, televisions, and a wide array of consumer and military electronics products. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and the Victor Talking Machine Company merged in 1929 becoming the RCA Victor Company in 1930. This merger allowed RCA to consolidate the research, engineering, manufacturing and sales of RCA products. This collection consists of negatives, a majority of which feature sound and television equipment manufactured by RCA. These images include phonographs, radios, radio-phonograph combinations, records, speakers, amplifiers, microphones, facsimile machines, televisions, equipment involved in the transmission and reception of television and radio waves, radio equipment created for use by government agencies and motion picture equipment.

H. Ray Warren (1921-2011) was a physicist, engineer, and inventor at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) for thirty-one years, working primarily on magnetic tape recording innovations. Warren's papers and audiovisual materials form a small collection that documents developments in magnetic recording for audio and video tape, primarily related to magnetic heads and low crosstalk processing signals. This collection is arranged into eight series: Personal files; Patent files; Proposals; Reports and technical data/information; SelectaVision files; Publications and reprints; Work meeting notes and photographs; and Audio and video recordings. The documentation is fragmentary; none of the sets of papers is complete.

Advertising, both print and radio, developed as a prominent industry in the early decades of the twentieth century as popular magazine circulation exploded and the radio became ubiquitous in American households. This collection consists of digital access copies of publications, including employee magazines, and magazine advertisements for radios and other related household electronics dating from 1912 to 1980.

RCA Victor was an American electronics company. Nicholas F. Pensiero (1918-2003) worked for RCA's Marketing Division. This collection contains sixteen photographs in which Gladys McHugh is the model posed using RCA Victor appliances. The remainder of the photos are candids, some taken inside or near RCA offices.

Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was incorporated in 1919, entered the broadcasting field in July 1921 and shortly thereafter began to sell home broadcasting equipment manufactured by GE and Westinghouse. The collection consists of photographs and negatives relating to Radio Corporation of America (RCA), the Victor Talking Machine Company, which was purchased by RCA in 1929, and the RCA-Victor Division of Radio Corporation of America.

For over fifty years the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was one of the country's leading manufacturers and vendors of radios, phonographs, televisions, and a wide array of consumer and military electronics products. The Radio Corporation of America was incorporated in Delaware on October 17, 1919, and changed its name to RCA Corporation on May 9, 1969. This collection is primarily made up of moving images and sound recordings collected by the David Sarnoff Research Library relating to the RCA corporation dating from 1953 to 2009. There is a set of photographs related to the Nippon Television Network and two photograph albums, one of 30 Rockefeller Center and the other containing waveform and photo-radio equipment. This collection is organized into eight series: Broadcast programming, Communications, Events, History, Meetings, Popular recordings, Reference materials, and Nippon Television Network.

The Missile and Surface Radar Division (MSRD) of the Radio Corporation of America operated as a primary government and military defense contractor from 1953 to 1986, developing and implementing advanced radar systems. The photographs in the collection depict instrumentation, radar equipment, control equipment, and research facilities at both the MSRD and the Navy AEGIS Combat System Engineering Deveopment Site in Moorestown, New Jersey.

The RCA News and Information Department served a public affairs role for RCA corporate headquarters at Rockefeller Center in New York City. The collection contains photographs and negatives created or commissioned by RCA that document much of RCA’s history and activities. Many of the photographs were organized by the News and Information Department into subjects that cover the history of radio, television, communications, and consumer electronics, with a particular emphasis on RCA”s role in that history. Additional photographs are grouped by RCA division and document their specific achievements, with the RCA laboratories being especially prominent. This collection also contains a large number of photographic negatives that were taken by the public relations firm, Carl Byoir & Associates, which showcase many of RCA’s products, events, and facilities.

Robert W. Sarnoff (1918-1997), son of RCA founder David Sarnoff, became president of NBC in 1956 and succeeded his father as president of RCA in 1965. This collection consists of films, videos and sound recordings dating from 1953 to 1979 documenting the life and career of Robert W. Sarnoff. The collection has been organized into six series: Events, Meetings, Press and media coverage, Speeches, Travel, and General.