Edward Jackson (photographer)

Jackson sold newspapers (Philadelphia Bulletin) on street corners to help his family, where he met a studio photographer who offered him a job after school and Saturdays.

Jackson moved to New York City and worked for the American Press Association in the photo engraving department in 1912 where he also became a freelance news photographer.

From his personal journal:[vague] A new field of photography was emerging in 1910; newspapers wanted photographs to replace sketches and drawings for the news events they were going to print.

In 1915 Jackson was invited by his friend Thomas Alva Edison, newly appointed as President of the Naval Reserve Board, to document the inspection of a highly secret United States submarine "E-2" in the Brooklyn Navy yard.

He was given a battlefield promotion to Captain of the twenty-seventh division of the Army Signal Corps, and assigned directly to President Wilson's European peace entourage.

The aircraft—Old Glory—a German Fokker F.VII, was to be manned by pilots Lloyd W. Bertaud and James DeWitt Hill and the Daily Mirror managing editor Phillip A. Payne, a close friend of Jackson's, flying with them for one-on-one news coverage.

The planned east to west Atlantic Ocean crossing took flight on Thursday, April 12, 1928, from Baldonnel, Ireland, with a destination at Mitchel Field, New York, where Jackson waited for their arrival.

Jackson immediately left for Canada and hired a single-engine aircraft to fly him and other news reporters to Greenly Island to cover the story.

While none of the flight crew were injured as a result of the accident, famed aviator Floyd Bennett became ill and died while attempting to salvage the Bremen from Greenly Island.