Melville Eastham

Who was Melville Eastham?

Melville Eastham was a noted American radio pioneer and business executive.

Eastham was born in Oregon City, Oregon. After high school graduation from Portland Academy, he worked as electrician for a Portland street railway, then moved to New York City in 1905 where he worked for the Ovington X-ray Company. After noticing that the high-voltage spark coils used to excite X-ray tubes were becoming popular as transmitters for radio amateurs, he joined two other employees in 1906 to start the Clapp, Eddy, and Eastham Company in Boston, to sell spark coils, variable capacitors, and other radio devices.

In 1915 Eastham left Clapp-Eastham to form the General Radio Company, first located on the third floor of a small flatiron building still standing at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Windsor Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It provided radio components such as a Precision Variable Air Condenser, a Decade Resistance Box, a Precision Variable Inductance, and an Absorption Wavemeter, and quickly profited from strong demand for military radios during World War I and the subsequent radio broadcasting boom.