Evans Library Archives and the Radiation Inc. Collection in Melbourne, Florida

Florida Tech's Evans Library in Melbourne holds the university archives and special collections, whose main Melbourne holding is the archive of the electronics company Radiation, Inc.

The collections are formally the Harry P. Weber University Archives and Special Collections, housed in the John H. Evans Library on the Florida Tech campus. The archives page describes two roles: documenting the history of the Florida Institute of Technology and its impact on the community, and keeping research collections. The Special Collections holds several large research collections covering subject areas such as flight, poetry, ocean engineering, space, and related industries, and those collections include records, artifacts, photographs and audiovisual material.

For Melbourne history, the most important holding is the Radiation Inc. Archives, the papers and objects of the electronics company that started out in an old Naval building at the Melbourne Airport. Around it sit collections on a Space Coast congressman, a Florida poet laureate, a flight simulation pioneer and the general who directed the first successful United States space program.

The library is named for the Evans family of Melbourne, after John Evans gave $5 million from the 1980 sale of his citrus grove to a new library dedicated to his wife and his mother.

The library itself is older than its building. Gordon Patterson's 2020 history of Evans Library for Florida Tech places its start in May 1961, four months after University of Melbourne trustees had transferred ownership of the 35-acre campus on Country Club Road to Brevard Engineering College. Eileen Hall, a Georgia transplant who had worked as a journalist, was already sorting books at a time when the college had no full-time employees, let alone a librarian, and she kept the Tech Library open on weeknights between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon. Her first shelves held runs of The Physical Review and The IEEE Review given by Irving Wolff, RCA's vice president for research, who had flown into the Melbourne Airport in June 1959 to inspect the college.

In 1963, during the college's accreditation self-study, an educational consultant told Jerry Keuper that without a new library building the college's prospects were dim. The first one, the William August Bartholomae Library, was dedicated Jan. 23, 1965; it was a two-story building with space for 40,000 books and study space for 250 students. The $100,000 pledge from Sara Bartholomae that was meant to pay for it never arrived, Florida Tech sued for breach of promise in 1967, and the Bartholomae name came off the facade. In Melbourne, Florence 'Flossie' Evans rallied support to pay off the $150,000 in loans secured with that pledge. Flossie Evans became Florida Tech's first female trustee in 1973.

The present building came from a citrus grove. In 1980, John Evans announced plans to sell his 144-acre Melbourne citrus grove to the DeBartolo Corp., which intended a mall on the site, and to give the $5 million from the sale to a new library dedicated to his wife and his mother. On Jan. 24, 1985, the four-story, 66,500-square-foot building was dedicated. John Evans died before it was finished. Hall remained university librarian until 1972 and wrote monthly columns on the library in the Melbourne Times.

The Radiation Inc. collection holds documents, photographs, objects and engineer profiles from the Melbourne electronics company founded in 1950, spread across 782 online items and six boxed collections.

The Radiation Inc. Archives in the Evans Library digital collections open with the company's origin: Homer Denius and George Shaw founded Radiation Inc. in 1950, and its engineers worked on PCM telemetry, satellite earth stations, spacecraft electronics and reconnaissance systems. The online collection lists 782 items, many of them short profiles of Melbourne engineers and the programs they worked on, from Minuteman and Titan missiles to the Nimbus satellites and Apollo and Saturn data systems. The same page says the company had grown to 5,000 employees by 1967, when Harris Corporation acquired it.

The physical papers are described in ArchivesSpace. The Radiation, Inc. Small Collections finding aid (collection SC-RAD010) records that the company was first located in an old Naval building at the Melbourne Airport and later added facilities in Palm Bay and Orlando. It gives a different headcount at the merger, over 3,000 employees in 1967, so the two Florida Tech descriptions do not agree on the figure. The collection spans c.1950 to 2016 and fills 2.51 cubic feet in 7 boxes, plus 4.97 gigabytes of digital media on 4 discs.

Much of SC-RAD010 came from former employees. Starting in 1996, the Radiation Old Timers began holding reunions, and some of the material was donated by families of members: documents, photographs, audio and video media and three-dimensional objects, arranged in 16 series by employee surname. Photographs show Radiation's overseas installations in the United Kingdom, Germany, Guam and Asmara, Eritrea. Five related collections sit alongside it: the Frank Perkins Papers (SC-RAD006), Jamie Cox Papers (SC-RAD007), Nancye Meyers Papers (SC-RAD008), A. B. Amis Papers (SC-RAD009) and Ray Penn Papers (SC-RAD011). The finding aid says the collection is expected to have continuous accruals as new donations arrive.

Beyond Radiation Inc., the Florida Tech archive holds the papers of Congressman Dave Weldon, poet Edmund Skellings and flight simulation pioneer Edwin Link and his wife Marion, plus digital collections on General John Bruce Medaris and the engineer Scott Frisch.

The ArchivesSpace collection list for Florida Tech Special Collections shows 9 processed collections. Six of them relate to Radiation Inc.; the other three are the Congressman Dave Weldon M.D. Papers (1995 to 2008), the Edmund Skellings Papers (1932 to 2015) and the Edwin A. and Marion C. Link Papers (1884 to 2018). The table below lists the nine with the identifiers and dates given in the collection list; the Ray Penn dates come from that collection's abstract.

The Evans Library digital collections add the General John Bruce Medaris collection and the Scott J. Frisch collection, which covers the development of American space exploration including Apollo, Saturn, Titan and Skylab.

Each has a Space Coast link. The digital collections overview states that Dave Weldon represented the Space Coast in Florida's 15th District for seven terms from 1995 to 2008, that Edwin A. Link is known as the Father of Flight Simulation and built submersibles to explore archaeological sites underwater, and that General John Bruce Medaris directed the first successful United States space program. The collection browser notes that Edmund Skellings held a lifetime appointment as Poet Laureate of Florida from 1980 until his death in 2012. The collection list describes the Weldon papers as covering the space program, defense, the Columbia accident and other issues from his years in Congress.

Not in person for now: as of October 18, 2026, the Florida Tech archives page states that the Archives are currently closed due to a staffing transition, and that staff are unable to assist with research requests or accept donations.

The same page says in-person appointments to view collections cannot be scheduled, asks for an email request for a list of alternative resources, and gives the address as 150 W. University Blvd., Melbourne, FL 32901, with the phone number (321) 674-8000. The SC-RAD010 finding aid lists the Special Collections contact as 307 Evans Library, phone (321) 674-8571, email [email protected].

The digital side stays open. The Evans Library digital collections, powered by Omeka, present items from the Special Collections and University Archives online for educational and research purposes, and the ArchivesSpace finding aids describe what is in each box of the Radiation papers. Use of the physical material comes with conditions: the SC-RAD010 finding aid says some records are restricted for privacy concerns and institutional policy, and that users must seek written permission from both the Harry P. Weber University Archives and Special Collections and the original copyright holder to publish or display any item. Researchers working on the Radiation years can read the finding aids and digitized engineer profiles now and plan box-level research for when Florida Tech reopens the archive.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against Florida Tech's archives page, the SC-RAD010 finding aid and Special Collections list in ArchivesSpace, three Evans Library digital collections pages, and Gordon Patterson's 2020 library history on Florida Tech News.