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Hi-Fi History: The Arguably Best Looking Inventor of all Times: Hedy LamarrOctober 2, 2015

Arved Deecke

 The woman who was to become world famous under her stage name Hedy Lamarr was remarkablein more ways than one.. Born as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler into a Jewish family of wealth in the lastthrows of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1914 she grew to become an astonishingly beautiful youngwoman and was discovered as an actress in her early teens. At that time she moved to Berlin topursue a world-wide career in silent movies. But at the same time, she was also an inventor whodeveloped and patented a technology called frequency-hopping spread-spectrum which you aremost probably using in one way or other every day of your life. In fact, you are probably using it asyou read this. Lamarr gained some immediate notoriety when starring in the German silent movie  “Extase” in 1933where she not only was briefly shown in the nude, but also displayed her face during orgasm muchto the dismay of the good people of the world at the time.  

 The same year the movie came out, she married an Austrian arms dealer and war profiteer, who wassaid to be the third richest man in Austria at the time. He was rather upset by his young wife’sorgasmic performance and tried to buy every single copy of the movie available. The marriage did not last. Two reasons can be attriuted to their short-lived matrimony. First, herhusband Fritz Mandl was known to be somewhat of a ''control queen.'' Additionally, despite his ownJewish root, he had strong ties to the growing fascist government in Italy and Germany. Lamarr toldstories of him hosting lavish events with both Mussolini and Hitler in attendance. At some point she decided to leave the marriage in what she best describes as an escape, whichled her to Hollywood via Paris in 1937.  

 

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Lamarr had dabbled at being an inventorthroughout her life. She had invented a sodadrink in the form of a tablet that could beadded to water. Unfortunately it tasted likesugared Alka Seltzer, which it probably was.She also suggested improvements to theKleenex box and the traffic light, thoughneither invention went very far. Her fifteenminutes of fame as an inventor were yet tocome. While she had detested her arms dealing

ex-husband’s political views and controlling ways, she did spend hours musing over his ideas fortop-secret weapons. For hours on-end and in the early forties she had become increasingly tired ofHollywood. Its ways became increasingly bizarre to her at times of so much struggle, suffering, andoppression in Europe. With World War II turning Europe into rubble, and the terrible revelation of The Holocaust unraveling,she wanted to turn her technical genius towards helping defeat Hitler. At a dinner party she metHollywood composer George Antheil who like her, loved challenging established ways in order tocome up with something better.  Antheil was a composer of remarkable symphonies like is BallettMechaique that provided the soundtrack to the 1924 Cubist Dadaistfilm by the same name. Antheil was always taken by  using  strangeinstruments; amongst them a series of mechanical pianos allsynchronized to play together. Those mechanical pianos used longrolls that had holes punched into them to encode music. Lamarr remembered her ex-husband’s shady work on torpedoes andtheir relatively high miss rate. Radio control had been suggested as asolution before, but the enemy could easily jam any radio control thatwould use a given frequency.  Worse yet, a remote-controlledtorpedo could even be hi-jacked. When talking about this problem, Intheir

 joint proposal to the US Navy, Lamarr suggested not using onefrequency but many to guide the explosive payload to an enemyship, and devised a method to hop between the frequencies insequences unknown to the enemy thus making jammingimpossible. Anheil pitched in with his mechanical pianoknowledge and suggested a similar mechanism could be usedto jump from frequency to frequency just as a piano jumps fromnote to note. 

 On August 11th 1942, U.S. Patent #2,292,387was granted to Antheil and "Hedy KieslerMarkey", Lamarr's married name at the time. Thisearly version of frequency hopping, though novel,soon met with opposition from the U.S. Navy andwas not adopted. Lamarr was dismissed as people apparentlystruggled with the possibility that exterior beautycould intellectual genius could both exist in thesame human life form. Lamarr was instead encouraged to use herpopularity and fame to help sell war bonds ratherthen help with military technology. Intent onhelping to defeat the Germans, she did so, andmanaged to raise the incredibly high amount of$7,000,000 dollars in one single fundraiser event. Patent #2,292,387 expired without beingexploited and it was not until 1962 when it wasused by US military ships during a blockade ofCuba after the patent had expired. Anheil neverlived to see the use of his ideas, as he hadalready died in 1959. One might never imagine that mechanical pianos would play a role in cuttingFidel Castro off from foreign supplies, but it was indeed the invention of Lamarr and Antheil that laidthe foundation for this important piece of technology. Lamarr's work was honored in 1997, when theElectronic Frontier Foundation gave her a belated award for her contributions.   So how might you be using Lamarr's invention if you are most probably not operating a torpedo orguided missile as we speak? Well In 1998, an Ottawa wireless technology developer, Wi-LAN Inc.,acquired a 49% claim to the patent from Lamarr for an undisclosed amount of stock. Hedy Lamarrdied in Florida in 2000 at the age of 85 and lived to enjoy the benefits of her brain-child.  Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea today serves as the basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as GPS, Bluetooth, COFDM as is used in Wi-Fi networkconnections, and CDMA that some cordless and cell phones use. So whether you are reading thisarticle on your mobile phone or your wifi enabled computer, it somehow links back to mechanical

pianos, torpedos and the woman who stood model

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10/3/2015 Kvart & Bølge | Audiophile Quarter­Wave Full­Range Speakers | | Hi­Fi History: The Arguably Best Looking Inventor of all Times: Hedy Lamarr

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for Snow White. Arved Deecke is founder of the Danish / MexicanLoudspeaker company  KVART & BØLGE  that makesaudiophile  quarter wave loudspeakers  and  soundsystems  at a price anyone can afford. In his free timehe blogs about all things related to sound, music and audio.

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