Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World

i1.19 © Horace Bristol/CORBIS

i1.20 United States Patent Office, Patent #2292387

i1.21 AP Photo

i1.22 Used with permission from Stars and Stripes, © 1945, 2011 Stars and Stripes

i1.23 ESA/P. Carril

i1.24 mptvimages.com

Illustrations

^{Hedy Kiesler (Lamarr), shown here at six, was born to wealth and privilege in Vienna in 1914. (illustration credit i1.1)}

^{Hedy’s father, Emil, a banker, encouraged her interest in how things worked. (illustration credit i1.2)}

^{The Kieslers entertained Vienna’s cultural elite in their spacious apartments. (illustration credit i1.3)}

^{At sixteen, Hedy skipped school and talked her way into work at Vienna’s largest film studio. Bit parts followed. (illustration credit i1.4)}

^{A first starring role in the 1933 Hungarian art film Ecstasy gave Hedy a controversial breakthrough. (illustration credit i1.5)}

^{Arms merchant Fritz Mandl, the third-richest man in Austria, married Hedy in 1933. The marriage soon soured. (illustration credit i1.6)}

^{When arson destroyed his family’s factories, Mandl rebuilt and sold munitions to Italy and Nazi Germany. (illustration credit i1.7)}

^{Mandl’s power intrigued Hedy, but his possessiveness made her feel locked in a golden prison. (illustration credit i1.8)}

^{While hosting German experts at this Mandl hunting lodge, Hedy heard talk of torpedo technology—and remembered it. (illustration credit i1.9)}

^{Young American composer George Antheil scandalized 1920s Paris with his radical music. (illustration credit i1.10)}

^{Igor Stravinsky, pictured here with premier danseur Vaslav Nijinsky, encouraged Antheil’s work. (illustration credit i1.11)}

^{Antheil scored his notorious Ballet mécanique for bells, sirens, an airplane propeller, and synchronized Pianolas. (illustration credit i1.12)}

^{Antheil’s complex, percussive scores required multiple player pianos. (illustration credit i1.13)}

^{German submarine wolf packs decimated British shipping in the early years of World War II. (illustration credit i1.14)}

^{The first commercial wireless remote control gave Hedy a model for her torpedo control system. (illustration credit i1.15)}

^{Now in Hollywood and horrified by German sinking of transports carrying British children, Hedy determined to invent a counter-weapon: a radio-controlled torpedo that would randomly switch frequencies to avoid jamming. (illustration credit i1.16)}

^{George Antheil helped Hedy develop her frequency-hopping idea (left to right: unknown, Boski Antheil in striped dress, Hedy, George, unknown). (illustration credit i1.17)}

^{From his player-piano experience, Antheil proposed using a punched “ribbon” to program frequency hopping. (illustration credit i1.18)}

^{U.S. torpedoes were plagued with accuracy problems until late in the war. In 1942, 60 percent were duds. (illustration credit i1.19)}

^{Despite its torpedo problems, the U.S. Navy rejected Hedy and George’s guidance system—too bulky, the navy brass said. (illustration credit i1.20)}

^{Hedy volunteered weekly at the Hollywood Canteen. In two weeks on tour in 1942 she sold $25 million in war bonds. (illustration credit i1.21)}

^{Stars and Stripes made gentle fun of Hedy’s invention, but within a decade it became basic military technology. (illustration credit i1.22)}

^{Today Hedy’s invention serves millions through GPS, Galileo, and GLONASS satellites, Bluetooth, cell-phone, and digital wireless systems. (illustration credit i1.23)}

^{Hedy (here at forty-six with her son and daughter, Anthony and Denise Loder) finally received recognition for her fundamental invention in 1997. (illustration credit i1.24)}

ALSO BY RICHARD RHODES

The Twilight of the Bombs

Arsenals of Folly

John James Audubon

Masters of Death

Why They Kill

Visions of Technology

Deadly Feasts

Trying to Get Some Dignity (with Ginger Rhodes)

Dark Sun

How to Write

Nuclear Renewal

Making Love

A Hole in the World

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Looking for America

Sons of Earth

The Last Safari

Holy Secrets

The Ungodly

The Inland Ground

Copyright

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Rhodes

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.doubleday.com

DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published and unpublished materiaclass="underline"

The Estate of George Antheiclass="underline" Excerpts from Bad Boy of Music by George Antheil (Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1945) and excerpts from the unpublished writings and correspondence of George and Boski Antheil (Library of Congress Antheil Collection). Reprinted by permission of The Estate of George Antheil, administered by Charles Amirkhanian.

Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., and Williams Verlag AG: Excerpts from The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, translated by Helmut Ripperger and Ben Huebsch, copyright © 1943 by the Viking Press, Inc. Rights to the underlying work, copyright © 1977 by William Verlag AG, Zurich. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., and Williams Verlag AG.