[QCWA Everglades Chapter #69] In 1933, a beautiful, young Austrian woman...(Oldie)

[Mike Williams]

Excellent! Thanks Bill...

73 de W4DL

Mike in EL96wf


On 2/22/2018 1:22 PM, Bill wrote:
>
> *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****???****a/k/a 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****are 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.*
>
> *And now you know the rest of the story.*
>
> **
>
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