While doing some research on Eric Palmer, of "Riding The Airwaves" fame - see -->>
http://oldqslcards.com/w2atz.pdfI started browsing the archives of the New York Times. During the 1920-1940s, NYC was a hot bed of radio activity, both in the broadcast and ham world. Found a good deal of info on Mr. Palmer, but also some choice tidbits on Hiram Maxim, the Trans-Atlantic Tests, the 1926 Radio Fair, etc. Even found some interesting reporting about Major Armstrong. The archive search function can go all the way back to 1851!
You can download and save the articles, the scanning quality is not too bad, and read them off line. Many articles are only viewable by payment of a fee, not cheap at $3.95 per article, but you can also buy "10 packs" for a discounted price of $1.60 per article. However, some articles are free to read and download, I found a number of Tesla letters and articles this way. If you don't see the blue "$" to the left of the listing, the article is able to be viewed and downloaded at no cost.
In any case, it makes for fascinating reading about the early days of radio, both the hams and commercial companies. Back in the day the NYT was the paper to read, they had excellent coverage of radio doings, and a fair amount of informal radio gossip.
Use of the site is easy, just go to the New York Times website,
www.nytimes.com, then use the "Search" bar in the upper left corner of the page. You can delimit searches in many ways, I found by a range of years to be the most direct. Once you commence a search, the article title and the first few lines of text will be listed. You can preview and then choose to download. The preview function does not always give a great idea as to the real content, so check twice before giving up your moo-la.
Here is an example search for the "American Radio Relay League" -->>
http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch?query=american+radio+relay+league&more=date_allInformation on "Radio Row" brings up this -->>
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=s&daterange=period&query=radio+row+cortlandt&srchst=p&submit.x=27&submit.y=4&submit=sub&hdlquery=&bylquery=&mon1=09&day1=18&year1=1925&mon2=12&day2=31&year2=1980Free items galore on this search of Tesla -->>
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=s&daterange=period&query=tesla&srchst=p&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=sub&hdlquery=&bylquery=&mon1=09&day1=18&year1=1925&mon2=12&day2=31&year2=1980Enjoy!
-Bruce
