Women's Radio Corps

The Women's Radio Corps was established during World War I by Edna Owen and an advisory council consisting of many influential figures in the field of wireless communications: Gano Dunn, past president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers; Alfred Goldsmith, co-founder of the Institute of Radio Engineers; Edward J. Nally, vice president and general manager of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America; and Columbia University professor Michael Pupin, then president of the Institute of Radio Engineers.

[1] The council was chaired by Owen herself and responsibility for the supply of wireless training apparatus for the WRC fell to Nally's commercial manager, David Sarnoff.

[1] A mere six days after the US entered the war in April 1917, Owen offered to provide 500 licensed female wireless operators in six months.

Members of the WRC also served as inspectors of wireless apparatus and worked in the Radio Research and Development section of the US Army Signal Corps.

[2] By late 1918, some of the members of the WRC had moved to Washington, D.C., where they joined many other single women in filling in for male workers in government bureaucracies, setting up a boarding house and establishing their headquarters at 2834 14th Street in the Columbia Heights neighbourhood.