One rarely finds individuals who excel in very diverse fields of endeavor.
For example, the well-known (and deceased) Danny Kaye was a superlative actor,
an accomplished surgeon, a music conductor of some stature, and a competent
aviator, among other things. And, in our field, its very founder was not only
a brilliant scientist and engineer but also an inventive hobbyist who built
scores of whimsical devices from unicycles to juggling machines. But there
is more! If one looks beneath the surface, one finds that many of our
colleagues have multiple talents and do excel in areas other than what we
best know them for.
These thoughts come to mind when I read some intriguing materials that come my
way via (who else?) the Historian "par excellence," Toby Berger, who, in turn,
had received them from Don Snyder, to whom they were sent by Bob Price.
Through this long chain of communication, there was a danger that, the data
processing theorem being always at work, something from the original story
might be lost or distorted. So, I will try to tread the ground cautiously.
Many of you are aware of (or perhaps carefully read) the article by Bob
Scholtz in the May 1982 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Communications
about the origins of Spread-Spectrum Communications. That is a fine piece of
research that lets unfold some sense out of the murky background (hidden in a
veil of secrecy) that preceded the development of spread-spectrum ideas and
systems as we know them today. The author gratefully acknowledges in that
article the immense help provided by Bob Price who supplied tons of
information on the early work of many individuals and groups who contributed
to this development.
And, yet, a crucial piece of hidden information eluded even Bob Price's
initial search. Thus, the article in the Transactions did not give credit to
an unlikely individual who, perhaps more than most, contributed to the
development of frequency-hopped spread-spectrum systems. Bob Price
discovered this information a little too late for inclusion in the special
issue of the Transactions, but gave it full prominence in a subsequent
article in the newsletter of the Sperry Research Center in September of 1982.
Also, later on, an article in the IEEE Spectrum (September 1984) makes
reference to this story.
What Bob Price discovered was a fascinating story about a lady who fled Nazi
Germany and became a glamorous Hollywood actress and who, during the early
phases of World War II, (get ready for this) invented the concept of frequency
hopping and obtained a U.S. patent for it! It may be hard to believe, but it
is also hard to understand. How could a screen actress have a secret talent
for engineering design? And yet, it is all clearly documented.
Hedy Lamarr (the lady's name) was born in Vienna, Austria and, after already
becoming famous for a sexy film called "Ecstasy" at the tender age of 19, she
married the pro-Nazi armaments manufacturer Fritz Mandl in a marriage arranged
by her parents (as one finds in many operas). She became so revolted by her
condition and by her husband's dealings that she escaped to the United
States where she settled to develop a successful career as an actress.
It gets even more incredible. She met the then avant-garde composer,
George Antheil at a Hollywood party. Antheil was known at the time as
"the bad boy of music." Lamentably, there are too many such "boys" nowadays!
In a coup of explosive motivation and inventiveness, the two of them developed
a system that would allow the signal that controlled the trajectory of a
torpedo to hop across a wide band of frequencies so as to escape jamming.
Apparently motivated by her desire to undercut the armament products of her
ex-husband, Ms. Lamarr developed not only the idea but an actual
implementation of such a system. A patent for their "Secret Communication
System" was granted in 1942. A clipping from the October 1, 1941 edition of
the New York Times reveals the news that the famous actress had made an
invention that was so vital to national defense that, as Colonel L.B. Lent,
chief engineering of the National Inventors council, put it, it was classified
in the "Red Hot" category. The only information revealed at the time was that
the invented device was related to remote control of apparatus employed in
warfare.
Bob Price has, since, engaged in many efforts to get Ms. Lamarr the
recognition she deserves. He actually interviewed her and tried to persuade
IEEE to recognize her with an award (alas, unsuccessfully). Eventually,
however, due to the efforts of David Hughes (described in a Naples (Florida)
{\em Daily News} article in March, 1997, as a "researcher at the National
Science Foundation") an award in recognition of her and composer Antheil by
the Electronic Frontier Foundation was presented at the Computers, Freedom,
and Privacy Conference in San Francisco in early 1997. Ms. Lamarr, who from
Bob Price's description emerges as an independent and bold spirit, greeted
the news about her award with the words: "It's about time!" As of the writing
of the materials that came my way, Ms. Lamarr was alive and well in Florida,
but shunning the public spotlight.
Now, isn't that a fascinating story? A beautiful, motivated, multi-talented
lady whose main activity in which she excelled was acting, touches our field
briefly but in a most fundamental way and leaves a memorable imprint of her
genius. Buried in U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387, are the details of her invention
that anticipated many of the subsequently developed systems such as Sylvania's
BLADES and others.
Giving this story the publicity it deserves among our readers has been truly a
pleasure. We owe an immense debt of gratitude to the tireless efforts of Bob
Price, who unearthed the story and who followed up diligently over the years.
Both he and Don Snyder graciously gave permission to use their private
communication. In addition, our thanks should go to Toby Berger who truly has
an "eye" for items worthy of historical attention.
And this brings me back to my musings about multiple talents that started this
column. There must be other examples out there that show that intellectual
prowess often manifests itself in diverse ways I am sure that the readers (and
I) would love to know about them.