Orrin Dunlap was an important newspaper radio editor, a prolific author of books on radio and television, and an important corporate radio publicist working in and reporting about radio's first several decades.

     Dunlap's radio experience began in 1912 with a home-built amateur radio transmitter in the attic of his Niagara Falls, New York, home. He gained commercial experience on the Great Lakes as a Marconi Wireless Telegraph operator. During World War I, he served as a U.S. Navy coast station radio operator in Maine. After receiving his B.S. from Colgate in 1920, Dunlap did some graduate coursework at the Harvard Business School before finding employment with the New York-based Hanff-Metzger advertising agency.

     He became the New York Times' first radio editor in 1922, just as the national craze for the new medium was reaching its peak. Carr Van Anda, the Times' managing editor, asked Dun­ lap to develop a regular radio section for the paper. Dunlap would hold the post for 18 years, becoming a widely read critic and columnist and one of the most influential commentators about radio.

     At the same time, Dunlap began writing books about radio; the first one, The Radio Manual, grew out of the many technical information requests from Times readers. Dunlap was able to write about technical matters in a clear fashion for those with little or no background. Eventually, he would publish 13 volumes on radio and related topics. Among them were two volumes on radio advertising (among the first on the subject to appear); a history of radio; a biography of Marconi in which the inventor cooperated; several books on television (the first being drawn from his columns in the Times, his only book so based); a reference book on radio inventors; a chronology of radio and television; and an overall history of telecommunications, the last edition of which appeared after his death. Though all long out of print, several of Dunlap's books remain standard reference works today.

     In 1940 Dunlap joined the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) as manager of the company's information department, rising to become a vice president (in 1947) of advertising and publicity before retiring. For most of this period he wrote RCA's annual report.