An important additional component, not original, was a “novel torpedo steering device—infinitely more accurate—and based upon [the] Philco Remote Control principle.” This electronic component would process the signals the torpedo received and convert them into instructions (in the form of electrical signals) to move the torpedo’s rudder to port or starboard to steer the weapon toward its target.
Here, then, was the invention in its semi-final form. What remained in the spring of 1941 was conferring with Mackeown at Caltech about the electronics of the system and working with Lyon & Lyon, their patent lawyers, to prepare as broad a patent application as possible.
One problem that emerged to be solved was how to start both “ribbons”—the one in the transmitter and the matching one in the receiver—at the same time so that the information coded on the two ribbons would be synchronized. If the ribbons were not in sync, the receiver would be tuned to the wrong frequencies when the signals arrived and would fail to pick them up, so the requirement was crucial. Hedy and George’s patent application explains the system they devised:
It is of course necessary that the record strips… at the transmitting and receiving stations, respectively, be started at the same time and in proper phase relation with each other, so that corresponding perforations in the two record strips will move over their associated control heads at the same time. We therefore provide an apparatus for holding both record strips in a starting position until the torpedo is fired, and for then simultaneously releasing both strips so that they can be moved at the same speed by their associated motors.
The holding apparatus in both transmitter and receiver used a pin that would engage a special starting hole in the record strip to begin moving the strip forward. A compression spring normally held the pin away from the starting hole. Below the pin was a solenoid—a wire-wrapped iron rod that was held away from the pin magnetically when the wire was electrified. The solenoids on both the transmitter and the receiver were connected by wire to a battery, and the current from the battery kept each solenoid energized. The battery circuit also connected to the transmitter in the ship and the receiver in the torpedo. When the torpedo was launched, it broke the connecting wire, which interrupted the electricity flowing to the solenoids, which ceased to be magnetized, which released the solenoid rods, which pushed up the pins that engaged the starting holes, which allowed the clock motors in both the ship and the torpedo to begin simultaneously moving the record strips.
A second problem Hedy and George had to solve followed from their decision to include seven transmitting channels in the transmitter but only four receiving channels in the receiver, thus allowing false signals to be sent on three channels to complicate and confuse an enemy’s jamming efforts. Resolving this problem was simpler: they provided for an indicator light at the transmitting station that would flash whenever the units were in transition between frequencies but would stay lit when the three false channels were engaged.
With these problems solved and the Secret Communication System fully laid out in their patent application, Hedy and George filed with the U.S. Patent Office for patent recognition on 10 June 1941. Receiving a patent would be an achievement different, of course, from a decision by the U.S. War Department to take up their system and develop it for military use. Their patent effort worked through the Patent Office; their War Department effort worked through the National Inventors Council. The council’s response continued to be positive, Antheil wrote to Bullitt on 30 June:
Recent communications from the office of Lawrence Langner, who is chief of the National Inventors Council, indicate that they and the War Department are deeply interested in Hedy Lamarr’s and my new radio-controlled torpedo; Langner indicates that the torpedo may be constructed and experimented with in Detroit….
In the meantime Hedy wants to come with me to Washington but I am discouraging this idea. We wouldn’t come unless the War Department really wants our torpedo, which torpedo is (incidentally) unique in that it is “jam-proof.”
Hedy was restless in part because she’d been laid off between pictures at MGM. She was ill in February and had lost weight; her illness ran into the layoff when she rejected the scripts she was offered. She was also in the process of negotiating a salary increase. “Hedy was here Sunday,” Antheil wrote to Bullitt on 19 July, “and as you can imagine is very keen about the whole project, and she keeps calling me almost every day to see how it has progressed…. It so happens that you are, apparently, Hedy’s dream prince. Some years ago she’s [sic] apparently seen a picture of you somewhere or another and decided that you are ‘it.’ You’d better watch out for her if she ever comes down to Washington without us. She’s rather inclined to, incidentally, as she is still on probation with M.G.M. and hasn’t anything to do just now.” An asterisk after “inclined to” led to a handwritten footnote: “Only concerning the invention, of course.”
Early in the new year, Boski Antheil had confronted her husband over his continuing effort to make a killing writing motion-picture scores. She explained the background to the confrontation in her unpublished memoir:
At that time George’s music was not much played; we lived in Hollywood, and although George was working as much as ever on his symphonic music, as far as New York was concerned, he was corrupted because he did a few picture scores to make a living, he was tainted, and not only tainted but probably living in the lap of luxury, sold himself down the river, probably had a golden bathtub, swimming pool and surrounded by gin and chorus girls. If they only knew! How we had to struggle to make ends meet, juggling bills and sometimes bill collectors, bringing up our son Peter, never really knowing where the next check was coming from. Mainly because George did not wish to become a movie composer, but reserved most of his time for his own music, and one picture a year or even two certainly does not keep the wolf away from the door.
“Hollywood is a funny place,” Boski added. “If you don’t play the game whole-heartedly and really live the Hollywood game, your price per picture is not very great.” She confronted her husband, hoping to convince him that he should give up his schemes for making a killing so that he could return to serious composing, and she trumped her argument by pointing out that at that time, in early 1941, they had exactly $36 in the bank.
Antheil saw the point. “O.K.,” he said. “Let’s move away. I’m in a rut.”
“We moved to a tiny little house on the beach,” Boski remembered, “where we spent two very productive years, the sea and the air clean and windswept. Peter walking around barefooted winter and summer, me cooking big pots of soup, and many friends coming out there to visit us.” The cottage was in Manhattan Beach, a few miles down the coast from what is now Los Angeles International Airport.
Antheil echoes his wife. “We got the smallest house… into which three humans can crowd. And all of a sudden, we were all very happy. We didn’t have five dollars to buy groceries with, but we were happy.” It was there that Hedy visited them, in an elegant white silk pantsuit, her rich, dark hair stirred by the breeze off the ocean, happy to spend time at the beach with normal people.