Peter Eckersley (engineer)

For the Television Producer, see Peter Eckersley (TV producer)

Captain Peter Pendleton Eckersley (PP Eckersley) (1892–1963) was a pioneer of British broadcasting. He was born on 6 January 1892 in Puebla, Mexico. His father, Alfred (d.1895 of Yellow Fever), was a railway engineer and was in charge of building the Grand Mexican Railway. In 1920 he was the on-air announcer, broadcaster (he used to recite poetry and sing songs) and engineer of 2MT, the first licensed radio station in Britain, located in the village of Writtle just outside Chelmsford in Essex, England where Guglielmo Marconi had built his wireless telegraphy factories. Peter Eckersley was the first Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Company, Limited from 1922 to 1927 and Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Corporation until 1929 when he was sacked by John Reith after divorcing his wife (Reith was a deeply religious man and would not tolerate the 'scandal' of having a divorced man working for him). He died on 18 March 1963 at the West London Hospital in Hammersmith.

Eckersley's elder brother was the physicist Thomas Eckersley.

Note: Some other sites have his middle name as Prothero, which is incorrect.