4th angel - HEDY LAMARR

  

My brother, Ian;  Cheryl Giobetti Hoffman;  Geneva Crockett Pitcairn.  Today, a new angel - as unexpected as Chandra's mother-in-law & Mrs. Pitcairn - joins that growing host ~ ~ Hedy Lamar.  Yes, the drop-dead-gorgeous movie star, a woman who was so much more than what appeared on the surface.

Ian is always with me.  Chandra's m-i-l constantly reminds me to get over myself, to get out of bed early in order to do what beckons to be done. Craig's Mom grabs me by my lower lip to do the work that needs doing.  How does Hedy come to join their host?

Hedy is my reminder of so many overlooked realities - inspiration can come from unexpected places, so always stay on the alert;  be true to your interests, however strange they may seem to others;  it's often sensible to keep what you're doing to yourself; and always do your creative best, even if it seems to get buried - give it a shot at being an idea whose time will come.

 

Hedy Lamarr was considerably more than a movie star.  She was an inventor.  She & an equally unlikely collaborator - a composer - developed & received a patent for a concept that has changed our lives.  Not that she was always remembered for it.  But while others might not have recognized her gifts, what she had to offer, Hedy never seemed in any doubt.

Hedy Lamarr - Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler - was born in 1914, the daughter of Austrian Jews.  She never played by others' rules.  At nineteen, she starred in Ecstacy, a ground-breaking "art house" film - it was the first time an actress appeared fully nude (in a swimming scene), portrayed an orgasm on screen.  

 

The flick, filmed in three languages, wowed the world - and brought young Hedwig to the attention of a mega wealthy arms dealer, Friz Mandl, who married the film siren... and promptly insisted she quit acting & devote herself to him.  

How deliciously ironic that Mandl insisted Hedy abandon her film career & join him, front & center, at countless dinners & meetings where he & his associates (including Hitler & Mussolini) talked freely & fully about the intricacies of the whiz bang new technologies of the day, especially advanced weaponry, including radio-controlled torpedoes.  Neither Mandl nor his buddies suspected that the trophy wife was soaking it all up.  By the time Hedy left the marriage - and headed to America - her husband & his cohorts had given the beauty a priceless education on applied science.

Described as a lifelong solution-finder, the actress made sure she set sail on the same ship as Louis B. Mayer - by the time she arrived in the USA, Hedy had an MGM contract tucked in her purse.  Mayer's one concern with the vivacious actress was her most famous role, in Ecstacy.  In those days, he was right in being concerned that wholesome American audiences might give Hedwig Kiesler a righteous cold shoulder, so she changed her name to Hedy Lamarr.  It worked!  From the young Austrian's first USA film, Algiers, with oh-so-french Charles Boyer, she was a smash.

 

Unknown to almost everyone - including her family - Hedy loved working on inventions.  I love the description - "glamorous movie star by day; by night, a lonely immigrant channeling an inner Thomas Edison."  She set a room aside in her house where she kept a drafting table & tools, installed proper lighting & had a wall lined with engineering reference books. 

 

In America, Hedy continued to find inventive inspiration in unexpected social settings.  It was at a Hollywood dinner party that she met George Antheil, a fairly off-the-wall composer who would become her collaborator developing frequency flipping, a revolutionary idea that lay unsung for decades.  

Both Hedy & Anthiel enjoyed playing with ideas.  Hedy had been wondering - if she could flip channels on her radio from across the room with a remote control, maybe the same technology could be used to keep the enemy from jamming our torpedoes. She set her mind on whether interchanging frequencies could solve the deadly problem of Germans jamming the Allies' radio-controlled torpedoes.  She & Anthiel wondered - if he could (as he did) synchronize multiple pianos to hop from one note to another, why couldn't radio signals steering torpedos do the same thing?  Hedy figured that both the transmitter & the receiver could jump simultaneously from frequency to frequency, totally befuddling anyone trying to jam the signal.  Together, they worked out the principles of frequency communications, using a piano roll to randomly switch signals sent in short bursts among 88 frequencies - like the 88 keys on Anthiel's piano keyboard.  

 

In August 1942, the "secret communication system" was awarded patent #2,292,387.  Scientists & other experts felt it was viable, but Navy brass, worried it was a cheap stunt by some crazed Hollywood press agent,  ridiculed the idea - " 'What, you want to put a player piano in a torpedo?" - and gave the invention the old heave-ho.  

They weren't the only ones to not give Hedy any respect for her inventive chops.  It's reported that when she sought to join the National Inventors Council, she was told by Charles Kettering & other influential members that she could be of more service to her adopted country by selling war bonds.

The patent was shelved & a disappointed but never embittered Hedy did go on to raising money (a lot) for the war effort. 

Fast forward to the 1950s & the birth of wireless technology.  Imagine the shock of discovering that U.S. Patent #2,292,387 was the brain child of Hollywood's elite, a ravishing actress & an avante-garde composer.   

  

 

Zoom forward a bit further, to 1962, and their frequency-hopping technology was first put to the test - not to remotely control torpedoes, but to safeguard communications among the naval ships involved in the Cuban Blockage.

Fast forward to today.  While the "Secret Communications System" developed by Hedy Lamarr & George Anthiel is still used extensively in military communications,  their once-ridiculed idea sparked the use of frequency communications, now called Spread Spectrum.  Their vision of interference-free simultaneous use of radio frequencies revolutionized our lives, forming the basis of cell phones, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi & so much more.  It that isn't jaw-dropping, I don't know what is!

 

Sadly, George Anthiel had been dead several years before the Cuban Blockage first proved the value of US Patent #2,292,387, decades before its recognition as the basis of modern communications.  Hedy was still very much alive.  How beyond fabulous that Hedy, who died at the turn of the new century, lived to see her invention become the foundation of wireless communications systems!

Although she didn't attend the ceremonies, she & George have been given their due & numerous honors.  What delicious vindication - take that, Charles Kettering! - that she was inducted, on her 100th birthday, in 2014,  into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame!   

Hedy - am sending a great big  THANK YOU your way!  I know that having you in my host of angels will bring amazing things into my life.  Your own life underscored the importance of making the most of natural gifts, of keeping your eyes & ears open for fresh information insight inspiration, of following interests however much others might think they are cuckoo, welcoming creative collaboration, working your best ideas into final completed form (even if no one in authority has the vision to see their value), and never ever fretting if recognition isn't forthcoming - it just might be the time hasn't come for it to be all it can.  To remember, as another great visionary & inventor* put it, to keep moving forward!

 

* Walt Disney, long before Cornelious Robinson!