power_aheadyConcept.htm

She was born in Vienna in 1914 as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. As a teenager, her interest in the theatre led her to the famous Berlin acting school headed by Max Reinhardt.

In 1933, at the age of nineteen, she exposed her acting skills, and much of herself, in a film called Extase (Ecstasy). She starred in that Czech film and, due to the nude scenes, it caused an international scandal. Before long, she became famous.

Fritz Mandal, the first of six husbands, also came along in 1933. It was upon the insistence of her parents that she married the prominent Austrian munitions tycoon.

During their four-year marriage, she became an institution in Viennese society. She entertained and dazzled foreign leaders, including Hitler and Mussolini. Mandal took his wife everywhere, including meetings with his biggest client, the Nazi Party.

Her husband manufactured shells, grenades and military aircraft. He had a special interest in control systems, conducting research in the field as his wife watched and learned.

Despite their Jewish background, Mandal sympathized with the Nazis. She, on the other hand, despised the regime and felt there was no future for Jews in Europe. One night, she left her husband and made her way to London. There she met Samuel Goldwyn, the Hollywood mogul.

He gave her a new stage name and brought her to Hollywood. There the raven-haired beauty starred in several films and became a social fixture. It was in Hollywood that she met composer George Antheil.

Antheil’s parents were from East Prussia. He was born in New Jersey in 1900. George studied music in Philadelphia and then pursued a career as a concert pianist in Europe. At first he was in Berlin and then settled in Paris in 1923, becoming a top avant-garde composer of the time. One of his pieces, “Ballet Meanique,” was scored for sixteen player pianos, xylophones and percussion. One version included one player piano, electric bells, airplane propellers and a siren.

It was in 1933 that he returned to the US, where he became a Hollywood film composer and a writer for magazines. One of his articles, written in 1939, dealt with his belief that war would soon erupt with Germany invading Poland, later Russia, and that the US would be drawn into the conflict. His predictions were quite accurate.

It was in the summer of 1940 that he met the subject of this column. He and she discussed the upcoming war and how they could support the allied troops against Germany. She told him that she was considering quitting MGM and moving to Washington, D.C., in order to offer her services to the newly established National Inventors Council.

They talked about torpedoes and how they were controlled by radio signals. Although the basic idea was not new, she had a new twist on it. Her concept was based on “frequency hopping.” Antheil, recalling the way he coordinated the sixteen player pianos in his “Ballet Meanique,” came up with a device by which the frequency signals could be synchronized.

The idea was designed to keep radio-controlled torpedoes from being jammed by the enemy and steered off course. She used her past knowledge of Nazi technologies while he used his expertise in player pianos. Together, their idea equated torpedo communication systems to the paper rolls in player pianos. The device used fluctuating frequencies and that was labeled as “frequency hopping.” It was impossible to jam. Even if the enemy could intercept any part of the message, they had no way of knowing the next part.

On April 11, 1942, they submitted their “Secret Communications System” to the US Patent Office. When the military received a copy of the patent, they saw the words “player piano” and discarded it. By 1962, the patent had expired. It was at that point that the US military began looking at old communication ideas to see if there was any inspiration for new ones.

That’s when they discovered the 1942 idea. This time the reception was quite different. The US government eventually implemented it in classified communications services.

The concept was installed on ships sent to blockade Cuba in 1962 and it became the concept behind the principal anti-jamming device used today in defense communication satellite systems. The Secret Communications System became known as Frequency Hopping.

When the concept was declassified some years later, private enterprise took it and ran. It eventually became the basis of 900-MHz cordless phones, select garage door openers, and even Bluetooth technology.

In the 40s, some thought she was the most beautiful woman in Hollywood. As an actress, however, she was upstaged by heroines like Ingrid Bergman and Katharine Hepburn. However, she never wanted to be known as just a pretty face. Behind the facade was actually a very smart, some would say brilliant woman. Which leads to the message of this column: let’s be careful not to judge people too quickly. There may be more to the story.

By the way, when he brought her to Hollywood, Samuel Goldwyn gave Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler the stage name of Hedy Lamarr.

A Daily Judgement Affirmation

I am careful not to judge people too quickly. There may be more to the story.