<nettime> Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil

[Florian Cramer <paragram@gmx.net>]

[Although it is generally not appreciated to recycle slashdot.org material
here, I found this commentary (by a Slashdot reader) outstandingly
interesting and deserving the attention of media art/media theory people. 
You may have read about Hedy Lamarr in the press recently, so let me just
add that George Antheil was, next to Varèse, one of the most innovate and
undogmatic composers in the early 20th century. His "Ballet mécanique" --
originally written for Léger's film of the same name - might be described
as the most radical and advanced piece of bruitistic music in the futurist
tradition. (Luigi Russolo's bruitism, while 'genuily' linked to the
Italian futurists, sounds retrospectively quite hilarious - late 19th
century opera libretti with some modest machine noise in the background.)
Antheil also wrote a "Jazz Symphony" in the 1920s which may be the first
attempt by a modern composer to take popular music serious. -FC]

* * *

Patents, Hedy, George, possibilities, and Slashdot

   by ChrisInSF on Thursday January 20, @05:39AM EST
   
   I was very sad to hear about the death of Hedy Lamarr tonight, and I
   wanted to share my opinions on her invention. George Antheil, her
   co-inventor, was my father, and Hedy's son Tony is a close friend of
   mine.
   
   The story of the "Secret Communications System" patent is truly one of
   the most incredible stories I've ever heard, (wouldn't it make a great
   film?) and a look at the patent is a real eye-opener for people who are
   familiar with modern digital technology.. Why? Because the design was for
   a digital system built with analog components..
   
   And the person who said that Hedy and George had given their patent to
   the government in hopes of helping to stop Hitler was right..Hedy had
   seen facists and facism at close hand.. and so had my father, and they
   both knew what was at stake..
   
   in spite of this, Hedy was still looked at suspiciously as an "enemy
   alien" by some.. :(
   
   She was married off by her family when she was stillin her teens, and was
   kept virtual prisoner in Austria as a "trophy bride" of the Austrian arms
   magnate Fritz Mandel a few years before the war, and she literally had to
   drug a maid in order to flee..
   
   While being forced to sit at the dinner table with her husband and his
   facist friends, who included high-ranking Nazi military officials, she
   built up a knowledge of military technology and carried that with her
   when she fled to London. (where Samuel Goldwyn, I think, gave her a
   ticket to the US) She met my father at a party at Janet Gaynor's house,
   and asked him if he could help her turn what was then a valid, but
   unformed idea into something that could work..(My father had a reputation
   in Hollywood as an experimental musician and as somebody who was familiar
   with the latest in technology..)
   
   It took them about six months to do the whole process, and the patent is
   really interesting.
   
     (you can see it at http://www.ncafe.com/chris/pat2/index.html at some
     point. I tried to check my site tonight and got a message saying that I
     had exceeded my "hard limit" ..Ive been linked to by media outlets
     several times, but this has never happened before..
     
     I have my web site virtual hosted at what was until recently Best, but
     they were recently bought by Verio -perhaps "assimilated" is a better
     word..:(
     
     (Best said that they would not turn off a site for a short anomaly like
     being picked "Cool Site of the Day", which is sort of like what has
     happened..but maybe that has changed..)
     
     an aside...does anybody have any suggestions how to avoid this in the
     future?
     
   Hedy and George never made a penny from the patent, which was really
   unjust, I think, because the government had classified it as "Top Secret"
   and made the commercial utilization of the invention difficult. Just
   after the patent expired, in 1960, it began to see commercial use..(in
   the Cuban Missle Crisis) Its now the main secure communications
   technology in use in Milstar, the US govt's 25 billion dollar
   "survivable" satellite communications system. Spread Spectrum is, in
   addition to being an incredibly efficient way to send data, inherently
   secure..  (one needs to know the code, in order to read the message..or
   usually, even know a message exists..)
   
   By the way, spread spectrum holds out another possibility with startling
   implications.. It could be used to create a new television and/or radio
   broadcasting service that would be able to, in any given geographic area,
   accomodate the broadcast of many, many more channels of information, at
   higher quality, than we have now, eliminating scarcity on the airwaves
   and the battles over bandwidth.. Just imagine, community radio, community
   television, creativity, true democracy of the airwaves, and perhaps,
   even, no need for a license to broadcast..and no more canned satellite
   shows..
   
   That possibility scares some interests tremendously. And its something
   worth fighting for.
   
   They have digital radio in Europe, why not here?
   
   Guess why...
   
     Back to the patent:
     Just a thought:
     The government sat on this..Rightfully, they should have compensated
     Hedy and George for that, or extended the patent to make up for the
     years in which it was classified... I know that Hedy was poor for many
     years.. until quite recently actually. She lived on a small pension and
     basically spent time with friends and tried to live cheaply.. My father
     was better off in the later years of his life, I understand, but was
     never rich in the same way that many well-known composers were. He was
     quite prolific musically, writing the scores for over 60 films.. But my
     favorite music of his was his early pieces.. He was enamoured with the
     possibilities opened up by machines, which could play faster and more
     accurately than any human ever could..
     
   Anyway, my father died about six weeks after I was born, so I never knew
   him.. But I definitely did inherit his interest in communications
   technology...and music..and now that I know the real story, I'm very
   proud of him..
   
   Now if only I could only get my only two relatives on this planet to stop
   saying I'm "blackmailing" them for simply being open about my
   father..(Its a generational thing, I guess.  my mother and father weren't
   married, big deal..)
   
   By the way, thanks for an excellent site, I read it almost every day..
   
   Chris Beaumont
   chris@ncafe.com 


-- 
Florian Cramer, PGP public key ID 6440BA05
<http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/index.cgi>
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