[HCARC] Fwd: [CTDXCC] WWII Wireless Pioneer

[W4wj at aol.com]

interesting WWII stuff!!
 
 
  
____________________________________
 From: scameron at austin.rr.com
To: ctdxcc at kkn.net
Sent: 3/26/2013 8:50:24  P.M. Central Daylight Time
Subj: [CTDXCC] WWII Wireless Pioneer


Neat Story I never heard.
Skip  W5GAI
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It all started with a skin flick.

In 1933, a  beautiful, young Austrian woman took off her clothes for a
movie director.  She ran through the woods, naked. She swam in a lake,
naked. Pushing well  beyond the social norms of the period.
The most popular movie in 1933 was  King Kong. But everyone in Hollywood
was talking about that scandalous  movie with the gorgeous, young
Austrian woman.
Louis B. Mayer, of the  giant studio MGM, said she was the most beautiful
woman in the world. The  film was banned practically everywhere, which of
course made it even more  popular and valuable. Mussolini reportedly
refused to sell his copy at any  price.
The star of the film, called Ecstasy, was Hedwig Kiesler. She said  the
secret of her beauty was "to stand there and look stupid." In  reality,
Kiesler was anything but stupid. She was a genius. She'd grown up  as the
only child of a prominent Jewish banker. She was a math prodigy.  She
excelled at science. As she grew older, she became ruthless, using  all
the power her body and mind gave her.
Between the sexual roles she  played, her tremendous beauty, and the
power of her intellect, Kiesler  would confound the men in her life,
including her six husbands, two of the  most ruthless dictators of the
20th century, and one of the greatest movie  producers in history.
Her beauty made her rich for a time. She is said to  have made - and
spent - $30 million in her life. But her greatest  accomplishment
resulted from her intellect, and her invention continues to  shape the
world we live in today.
You see, this young Austrian starlet  would take one of the most valuable
technologies ever developed right from  under Hitler's nose. After
fleeing to America , she not only became a major  Hollywood star, her
name sits on one of the most important patents ever  granted by the U.S.
Patent Office.
Today, when you use your cell phone  or, over the next few years, as you
experience super-fast wireless Internet  access (via something called
"long-term evolution" or "LTE" technology),  you'll be using an extension
of the technology a 20- year-old actress first  conceived while sitting
at dinner with Hitler.
At the time she made  Ecstasy, Kiesler was married to one of the richest
men in Austria .  Friedrich Mandl was Austria 's leading arms maker. His
firm would become a  key supplier to the Nazis.
Mandl used his beautiful young wife as a  showpiece at important business
dinners with representatives of the  Austrian, Italian, and German
fascist forces. One of Mandl's favorite  topics at these gatherings -
which included meals with Hitler and Mussolini  - was the technology
surrounding radio-controlled missiles and torpedoes.  Wireless weapons
offered far greater ranges than the wire-controlled  alternatives that
prevailed at the time.
Kiesler sat through these  dinners "looking stupid," while absorbing
everything she heard.
As a  Jew, Kiesler hated the Nazis. She abhorred her husband's  business
ambitions. Mandl responded to his willful wife by imprisoning her  in his
castle, Schloss Schwarzenau. In 1937, she managed to escape. She  drugged
her maid, snuck out of the castle wearing the maid's clothes, and  sold
her jewelry to finance a trip to London .
(She got out just in  time. In 1938, Germany annexed Austria . The Nazis
seized Mandl's factory.  He was half Jewish. Mandl fled to Brazil .
Later, he became an adviser to  Argentina 's iconic populist president,
Juan Peron.)
In London , Kiesler  arranged a meeting with Louis B. Mayer. She signed a
long-term contract  with him, becoming one of MGM's biggest stars. She
appeared in more than 20  films. She was a co-star to Clark Gable, Judy
Garland, and even Bob Hope.  Each of her first seven MGM movies was a
blockbuster.
But Kiesler cared  far more about fighting the Nazis than about making
movies. At the height  of her fame, in 1942, she developed a new kind of
communications system,  optimized for sending coded messages that
couldn't be "jammed." She was  building a system that would allow
torpedoes and guided bombs to always  reach their targets. She was
building a system to kill Nazis.
By the  1940s, both the Nazis and the Allied forces were using the kind
of single-  frequency radio-controlled technology Kiesler's ex-husband
had been  peddling. The drawback of this technology was that the enemy
could find the  appropriate frequency and "jam" or intercept the signal,
thereby  interfering with the missile's intended path.
Kiesler's key innovation was  to "change the channel." It was a way of
encoding a message across a broad  area of the wireless spectrum. If one
part of the spectrum was jammed, the  message would still get through on
one of the other frequencies being used.  The problem was, she could not
figure out how to synchronize the frequency  changes on both the receiver
and the transmitter. To solve the problem, she  turned to perhaps the
world's first techno-musician, George  Anthiel.
Anthiel was an acquaintance of Kiesler who achieved some notoriety  for
creating intricate musical compositions. He synchronized his  melodies
across twelve player pianos, producing stereophonic sounds no one  had
ever heard before. Kiesler incorporated Anthiel's technology  for
synchronizing his player pianos. Then, she was able to synchronize  the
frequency changes between a weapon's receiver and its  transmitter.
On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 was granted to  Antheil and
"Hedy Kiesler Markey," which was Kiesler's married name at the  time.
Most of you won't recognize the name Kiesler. And no one would  remember
the name Hedy Markey. But it's a fair bet than anyone reading  this
newsletter of a certain age will remember one of the great beauties  of
Hollywood's golden age ~ Hedy Lamarr. That's the name Louis B.  Mayer
gave to his prize actress. That's the name his movie company  made
famous.
Meanwhile, almost no one knows Hedwig Kiesler - aka Hedy  Lamarr - was
one of the great pioneers of wireless communications. Her  technology was
developed by the U.S. Navy, which has used it ever  since.
You're probably using Lamarr's technology, too. Her patent sits at  the
foundation of "spread spectrum technology," which you use every day  when
you log on to a wi- fi network or make calls with your  Bluetooth-enabled
phone. It lies at the heart of the massive investments  being made right
now in so-called fourth-generation "LTE" wireless  technology. This next
generation of cell phones and cell towers will  provide tremendous
increases to wireless network speed and quality, by  spreading wireless
signals across the entire available spectrum. This kind  of encoding is
only possible using the kind of frequency switching that  Hedwig  Kiesler
invented.
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