[SFDXA] In 1933, a beautiful, young Austrian woman...(Oldie)

[Bill]

*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.*

**