William Arnold Baker [known as Arnold] was born on 15 September 1916 in Sheffield to John Thomas Baker and Sarah J. Baker (née Bell). Baker trained as an electrical engineer, and in 1939 was employed as an ‘Assembler and Tester’. He worked on Range and Direction Finding technology during the Second World War, and c 1941 he was posted to Worth Matravers with the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE). There he was part of a team using the newly invented cavity magnetron to perfect Airborne Intercept radar in night fighters. This team moved to Malvern in May 1942, which became Baker's permanent base. Baker learned to fly aircraft after the Second World War, and was issued with his flying licence by the Royal Aero Club in December 1948. He jointly purchased a share in an RAF-surplus de Havilland DH.82A Tiger Moth plane, which he used to take a large number of the photographs within the collection between the mid-1950s to mid-1970s. Baker married Marjorie S. Greenway in 1944, and died in 2014.