Finding Aids

Alexander Magoun was the curator for the David Sarnoff Library from 1998 until 2000. After earning his Ph.D. in American History from the University of Maryland in 2000, he led the David Sarnoff Library as the Executive Director from 2000 until 2009. This collection includes advertisements from RCA and other companies for radios, televisions, phonographs, and other consumer electronics.

The Allen D. Cardwell Manufacturing Corporation was a major producer of radio and telecommunications equipment during the twentieth century. Cardwell sold its products to the United States Government, major corporations, and individual consumers. The records contain technical information such as patents and design drawings, as well as a vast array of sales and promotional material from the 1920s.

Charles A. Rosencrans (1908-1991) was an RCA engineer who specialized in radio transmission. His notebooks largely consist of fragmentary handwritten notes from both his career at RCA and from his studies in electrical and mechanical engineering at Lehigh University.

David Sarnoff (1891-1971) was the iconic leader of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) for most of the company's history. For many years the only Jewish executive in the communications field, Sarnoff was highly influential in the development of radio and television. The focus of the David Sarnoff papers is the original David Sarnoff Collection assembled by Sarnoff to celebrate his career. However, the papers also include the extensive photographic, publicity, and administrative files created by his staff at RCA and a substantial audiovisual component.

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.

The General Radio Company was incorporated in 1915, in Cambridge, Massachussets by Melville Eastham (1885-1964), and was famed for their development and manufacture of electronic instruments, test equipment, laboratory standards throughout the twentieth century. The General Radio Company History materials largely document the efforts to write a synthetic history of the General Radio Company in the late 1980s and early 1990s, supported by the IEEE History Center. While Joseph F. Keithley headed the project, it was conceived as a collaborative endeavor with various persons each writing a chapter on their topic of specialty. Additionally, there is a large binder labeled, “Company Data” containing alphabetically organized information about other firms involved in the manufacture and development of precision measuring instruments over the course of the twentieth century.

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.

The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Corporation of America was founded in 1899 as the American branch of Guglielmo Marconi’s (1874-1937) Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company of London. Because of its emphasis on providing radio transmitter receivers for ships and fostering oceanic communications, the U.S. Navy commandeered the company during World War I. After the war, both government and industry colluded to buy out the British company; they created the Radio Corporation of America in its stead in 1919. This collection includes around 1,300 engineering and technical drawings from the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America . Subjects depicted range from circuit diagrams, wiring layouts, and switchboard schematics to architectural plans for aerial towers and carrying case designs.

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. This collection contains the records from the Secretary's Office of the Victor Talking Machine Company and its successors RCA Victor Company, Inc., and Radio Corporation of America's RCA Victor Division. They consist of minutes of the Executive and Management Committees, an internal annual report and two contract files for supplying sound equipment to movie studios.

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.

The Radio Corporation of America (renamed RCA Corporation in 1969) was a major American electronics company founded in 1919. RCA dominated electronics and communications for over fifty years. RCA Rocky Point Station was built as a communication hub known as Radio Central. Radio Central was the largest radio station in the world at one time, and its primary focus was intercontinental communications. This collection documents the activities of RCA Rocky Point Station, including its construction plans, blueprints, reports, and files relating to antenna data and calculations, building systems information, and radio propagation. Rocky Point Station was in operation from 1921 to 1978. This collection would be useful to researchers interested in RCA communications, early radio broadcasting, radio engineering, and radio propagation.

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 records of the RCA Corporation consist of three series: Secretary's files; B.L. Aldridge files; and the Camden Technical Library files. The collection is largely RCA technical reports, standards, engineering notebooks, manuals and miscellaneous publications. The Secretary's files document the formation of RCA. Aldridge's files deal almost entirely with the history of the Victor Talking Machine Company, RCA-Victor and the Camden Plant.