Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works and I love all things tech.
Speaker 1: And today we're gonna talk about a person who was
Speaker 1: very important in technology, although it was not acknowledged or
Speaker 1: really widely known for many decades after her actual contribution.
Speaker 1: And this comes from several listeners who have requested that
Speaker 1: I cover Hetty Lamar. So from the nineteen thirties until
Speaker 1: ninety head vig Ava Keisler, better known in the United
Speaker 1: States as Hetty Lamar, appeared in feature films like Boomtown,
Speaker 1: Lady of the Tropics, and Tortilla Flat. She played Delilah
Speaker 1: in Samson and Delilah and the Cecil B. De Mill
Speaker 1: epic film. He acted opposite people like Jimmy Stewart and
Speaker 1: Judy Garland and Zigfried Girl or Zigfeld Girl, I should
Speaker 1: say not Zigfried. She was in several films and TV shows,
Speaker 1: but more importantly to text Stuff. She made important contributions
Speaker 1: to technology that for decades was completely unknown by the
Speaker 1: general public and only relatively recently has been part of
Speaker 1: the general discussion essentially since about n or So. In
Speaker 1: this episode, I'm going to talk a lot about hay
Speaker 1: Lamar's life, not just her work in technology. And I'm
Speaker 1: doing this because I think it's really important to get
Speaker 1: an understanding of what her world was like and what
Speaker 1: it must have been like to come up with a
Speaker 1: fiendishly clever and useful idea that would go unacknowledged for decades.
Speaker 1: Her story is in many ways tragic, but to understand
Speaker 1: that tragedy, we really need to learn about her life
Speaker 1: in general. So Hetty Lamar was born on November nine
Speaker 1: in Vienna, Austria, to a well to do Jewish family.
Speaker 1: Her father was a banker and a technology enthusiast, and
Speaker 1: as a child, Lamar was known to be really curious
Speaker 1: and inquisitive and drawn to the sciences, particularly chemistry. She
Speaker 1: enjoyed studying, and she enjoyed experimenting with stuff. At the
Speaker 1: age of five, she took apart a music box to
Speaker 1: see how it worked, and then meticulously reassembled it so
Speaker 1: that it would work again. Reportedly, she spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time talking with her father, emil Keisler, in an
Speaker 1: effort to learn how stuff works. Sounds like she would
Speaker 1: have really liked the website I wrote for. She wanted
Speaker 1: to know stuff about electricity, how street cars worked, how
Speaker 1: power plants work, and when she grew into a teenager,
Speaker 1: she also noticed that people started treating her differently. She
Speaker 1: was a beautiful young woman, and she could not help
Speaker 1: but notice that she had a real effect on other
Speaker 1: people when she was in their presence, particular really among men,
Speaker 1: and she found she kind of liked having this sort
Speaker 1: of power and effect on people. At the age of sixteen,
Speaker 1: she started modeling for photographers, including doing some nude modeling,
Speaker 1: and in an interview, Lamar referred to herself as a
Speaker 1: L'Enfant terrible child. In other words, as a French expression,
Speaker 1: and it typically means a child who speaks without any
Speaker 1: kind of filter, someone who might just speak what they're
Speaker 1: thinking immediately without considering it's a fact, and thus potentially
Speaker 1: embarrassing an adult nearby. For example, it happened to me
Speaker 1: personally when I was in a grocery store and a
Speaker 1: mom and her little son are walking past me, and
Speaker 1: the little son looks at me and looks at his
Speaker 1: mom and says, Mommy, that man has no hair. Well,
Speaker 1: that's true. I'm bald, but I know that I'm familiar
Speaker 1: with it. It's not a shock to my system. I've
Speaker 1: been living that way for two decades. But the mother
Speaker 1: was horrified that her child would say something like that
Speaker 1: in public, an earshot of me. I thought it was
Speaker 1: funny because it was just an observation and it didn't
Speaker 1: bother me at all. But that's sort of the kind
Speaker 1: of thing they mean. But the expression can also refer
Speaker 1: to someone in the creative arts, like an actor or
Speaker 1: a dancer, or an artist or a photographer, someone who
Speaker 1: thinks outside the norm, who is more avant garde and
Speaker 1: more daring and potentially more offensive as a result, someone
Speaker 1: who goes against the standard and therefore can end up
Speaker 1: stirring up trouble. She referred to herself in this context.
Speaker 1: In n three, when she was just nineteen years old,
Speaker 1: she was cast in a Czech Austrian film called Ecstasy.
Speaker 1: This movie became infamous at the time for one thing.
Speaker 1: Henny Lamar appears nude in the film and a couple
Speaker 1: of different scenes, and there was also a sex singing
Speaker 1: in that movie that was considered positively scandalous by the
Speaker 1: standards of the day, Lamar would earn for herself a
Speaker 1: reputation that would follow her throughout her life, largely because
Speaker 1: of that movie. Unfairly, i would say, especially when you
Speaker 1: compare it to films today. It was nothing particularly uh
Speaker 1: racy by a lot of today's R rated movie standards,
Speaker 1: but at the time it was considered absolutely scandalous. She
Speaker 1: also had to reconcile with her father, whom she loved dearly.
Speaker 1: In fact, she would later say in her life that
Speaker 1: no man she ever was attached to could measure up
Speaker 1: to her father. He was extremely upset by the film
Speaker 1: and the scandal, and then, sort of as a way
Speaker 1: to kind of redeem herself in a sense, she went
Speaker 1: on to perform in a prestigious stage production, a very
Speaker 1: respectful stage production, and that kind of helped heal her reputation,
Speaker 1: at least for the time being. She also met and
Speaker 1: then married a wealthy arms manufacturer named Fritz Mandel, who
Speaker 1: was fourteen years older than she was, so she was nineteen,
Speaker 1: he was thirty three. According to interviews, several historians have
Speaker 1: suggested that Lamar liked the thought of being an influential
Speaker 1: man's wife. She found that idea appealing, but she soon
Speaker 1: found Mandel to be controlling and domineering. He was also
Speaker 1: supplying weapons to Germany, which meant he was weaponizing the
Speaker 1: Nazi Party. This was early in the history of the
Speaker 1: Nazi Party in Germany. Hitler would not become fewer until
Speaker 1: August second, nineteen thirty four. Mandel, though Jewish, was seen
Speaker 1: as incredibly important for Germany's plans, and while Hitler probably
Speaker 1: never visited Mandel's estate personally because he would not want
Speaker 1: to be captured on film as associating with someone who
Speaker 1: was Jewish, it is true that Mussolini was a house
Speaker 1: guest of Mandel's. Fritz was reportedly a very jealous man,
Speaker 1: constantly suspecting Hetty lamar Uh, suspecting his wife of infidelity,
Speaker 1: and he tried to buy up all the prints of
Speaker 1: the film Ecstasy in order to suppress the movie. He
Speaker 1: didn't want other people seeing his wife nude on film,
Speaker 1: but really that just gave the filmmakers more incentive to
Speaker 1: make more prints of the negative because he kept on
Speaker 1: buying them, so there was already made audience, even if
Speaker 1: it was just a one person. He spent more than
Speaker 1: a couple hundred thousand dollars buying up prints of this movie,
Speaker 1: and they just kept printing up more, and so finally
Speaker 1: he kind of gave up on that. The two remained
Speaker 1: married for four years, but by nineteen thirty seven, tensions
Speaker 1: were running high in Europe and in her household. Hitler
Speaker 1: had already begun his anti Semitic policies by the time,
Speaker 1: though Mandel was again sort of insulated and protected by
Speaker 1: his occupation as an armament's manufacturer. But Hetty's father, Emil,
Speaker 1: was distraught by what was going on in the world,
Speaker 1: and the stress was really getting to him. He actually
Speaker 1: would die of a heart attack that year, and that
Speaker 1: devastated Hetty. Hetty had decided that by this time she
Speaker 1: had to get away. She was scared, she was angry,
Speaker 1: she was disgusted by what was happening in Europe and
Speaker 1: Hitler's campaign against Jewish people, and so one evening she
Speaker 1: decided to escape from Mandel's home and flee. And there
Speaker 1: are different accounts of how she managed this, including some
Speaker 1: in which she supposedly drugged a maid, used some sleeping
Speaker 1: powder mixed in a drink and gave it to the maid,
Speaker 1: which made her fall unconscious, and then she ended up
Speaker 1: switching places with the maid, dressing in the maid's outfit,
Speaker 1: and then making her escape that night. Whatever that she used,
Speaker 1: she did flee to England. In England, she had the
Speaker 1: good fortune to run into Louis B. Meyer, the co
Speaker 1: founder of MGM Studios. Meyer was touring England looking for
Speaker 1: European talent who were fleeing the continent. So he was
Speaker 1: kind of taking advantage of a really bad situation and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: if things are too hot here, you should come to America.
Speaker 1: Sign with me, become an actor in my studio, and
Speaker 1: I'll give you a living. So he offered Lamar the
Speaker 1: princely sum of one five dollars per week if she
Speaker 1: would sign on to a studio. Now, a quick word
Speaker 1: about this. From the nineteen twenties until about the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: movie studios had sort of a death grip on film
Speaker 1: stars and directors and movie theaters. Talent would sign contracts
Speaker 1: with a specific movie studio and that would guarantee a
Speaker 1: certain number of films or pictures for that studio, and
Speaker 1: they would be locked in. They could not make movies
Speaker 1: for competing studios unless there was an agreement between the
Speaker 1: two studios, and some sort of exchange. So the studios
Speaker 1: also would own chains of theaters, and they would have
Speaker 1: their own films shown in those theaters and not their
Speaker 1: competitors films. There were some independent theater owners in the
Speaker 1: United States at that time, but the movie studios would
Speaker 1: also end up leveraging their power over those independent outlets
Speaker 1: as well. What they would do is something called a
Speaker 1: a block booking deal. Block Booking was where let's say
Speaker 1: you're an independent film theater operator and you really want
Speaker 1: to UH exhibit Gone with the Wind, and you really
Speaker 1: need to have a print of Gone with the Wind
Speaker 1: because you want to show it in your theater. Block
Speaker 1: Booking would mean that if you wanted to show that movie,
Speaker 1: the movie studio would say, all right, well, you can
Speaker 1: buy Gone with the windprint for X amount of dollars,
Speaker 1: but you also have to show these other four movies
Speaker 1: that were bundling with that film, and you would be
Speaker 1: forced to take on all those movies and try to
Speaker 1: show all of those movies at your theater. That practice
Speaker 1: is ultimately what brought down the whole studio system, because
Speaker 1: there was an antitrust lawsuit in the UH well started
Speaker 1: in the thirties, but really it didn't completely develop until
Speaker 1: the fifties, and at that point the movie studio system
Speaker 1: started to break apart, and eventually the studios had to
Speaker 1: stop this practice, and so you no longer have this
Speaker 1: system where a movie studio will sign an actor to
Speaker 1: a certain number of pictures. You have franchises that will
Speaker 1: do that, like Star Wars or the Marvel films, where
Speaker 1: they'll sign an actor and it will guarantee a certain
Speaker 1: number of films within that franchise. But they are no
Speaker 1: longer a studio exclusive. They can still do films with
Speaker 1: other film studios. But back in Hetty's day, that wasn't
Speaker 1: the case, and a hud dollars a week did not
Speaker 1: seem like it was going to be enough for her.
Speaker 1: Because here's a woman who came from a privileged background.
Speaker 1: She grew up in a wealthy household in Austria. She
Speaker 1: then married a wealthy man, the armament's manufacturer. She still
Speaker 1: had a great deal of money and jewels and really
Speaker 1: nice clothing on her. She didn't just flee with the
Speaker 1: clothes on her back. She really had pretty pretty swanky
Speaker 1: luggage on her at the same time. So she knew
Speaker 1: that dollars wasn't gonna be That wasn't gonna cut it,
Speaker 1: and so she told Meyer, no thanks, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to take that deal. However, she did want to go
Speaker 1: to America and she did want to work in movies.
Speaker 1: So what she did was she found out what boat
Speaker 1: Meyer was taking back from England to return to the
Speaker 1: United States and booked herself on the same ship. Then
Speaker 1: she made it a point to walk by him as
Speaker 1: frequently as she hood in different outfits, including one where
Speaker 1: she was just dressed to the nines, decked out in
Speaker 1: the most amazing gown, and Meyer said, I have to
Speaker 1: have this actress in my studio. So he went back
Speaker 1: to her and gave her a new offer of five
Speaker 1: dollars per week, which she accepted. In America, she took
Speaker 1: on the stage name of Hetty Lamar, which they figured
Speaker 1: was a better name. At the time, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of fear on Myers part of having actors and
Speaker 1: actresses who had Jewish last names, and this is just
Speaker 1: an unfortunate side effect of the time, so she ended
Speaker 1: up adopting the name Hetty Lamar as her stage name.
Speaker 1: She dated several prominent men, including Howard Hughes, the businessman,
Speaker 1: pilot film director and later on kind of eccentric. I
Speaker 1: guess is the word you use when you're that wealthy,
Speaker 1: but he was famously odd. Hughes and Lamar struck up
Speaker 1: a friendship. Lamar had built an inventing table in her
Speaker 1: own home. She still enjoyed experimenting and tinkering with stuff,
Speaker 1: and when Howard Hughes found out, he ended up giving
Speaker 1: her a gift of a smaller inventing table, one that
Speaker 1: was semi portable that she could set up in something
Speaker 1: like a movie trailer, so when she was on a
Speaker 1: movie shoot she could have a little inventing table in
Speaker 1: her dressing room trailer and have a place to kind
Speaker 1: of unwind and tinker with things. There's actually a story
Speaker 1: about Hughes and Lamar that I want to mention before
Speaker 1: I go to break. Hughes was working hard on building airplanes.
Speaker 1: He was a pilot, but he also had a design
Speaker 1: desire to create a plane that was really fast and maneuverable,
Speaker 1: largely because he anticipated that the United States military was
Speaker 1: going to have a need of them with the possibility
Speaker 1: of war in Europe looming. But his designs were not
Speaker 1: producing the results he wanted, so Lamar took a look
Speaker 1: at these planes which had wings that ended in sort
Speaker 1: of a squared off shape. They kind of look like
Speaker 1: like flat rectangles extending out from the sides of the plane,
Speaker 1: and then a it struck her as wrong. So she
Speaker 1: went out and bought books on fish and birds and
Speaker 1: started studying their fins and their wings respectively, and started
Speaker 1: looking for the fastest animals in those categories, and then
Speaker 1: looking at their wings and saying how are their fins
Speaker 1: and saying how are they shaped? How does that help
Speaker 1: this animal move through the air through the water. And
Speaker 1: then she sketched out a wing for an airplane based
Speaker 1: on those shapes and told Hughes he would have better
Speaker 1: luck with a similar design, and he said that she
Speaker 1: was a genius. Now, in the next section, I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk more about the technology that Lamar helped invent
Speaker 1: and why it was so important, But first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor Hetty. Lamar would
Speaker 1: then go on to marry a screenwriter named Gene Markis
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine. He would be the second of
Speaker 1: six husbands. Lamar had a tendency to attract men to her,
Speaker 1: but it seems most of those men didn't really know
Speaker 1: her as a person. They saw her beauty. That's what
Speaker 1: they fixated upon. So I'm not going to go through
Speaker 1: each and every marriage because that would be excessive and
Speaker 1: far beyond what we need to talk about in this show.
Speaker 1: But I think it's good to know she had trouble
Speaker 1: finding someone she fit with because it gives a sense
Speaker 1: of the frustration and isolation she must have felt throughout
Speaker 1: her life. We we had seen at this point that
Speaker 1: war was inevitable. War had actually started to break out
Speaker 1: in Europe, and by nine that war was well under way,
Speaker 1: and Lamar was ordered by Meyer to never mention her religion. Remember,
Speaker 1: Hetty Lamar grew up Jewish. Lamar seemed fine, at least
Speaker 1: with leaving behind her Jewish identity. At least she didn't
Speaker 1: seem to put up any kind of fuss about this
Speaker 1: and never had a problem sort of moving beyond that.
Speaker 1: But she did very much want to find a way
Speaker 1: to have her mother or join her in the United States.
Speaker 1: Her mom had successfully fled Austria to arrive in England,
Speaker 1: but she was kind of stuck there for the time being,
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, German submarines were terrorizing the seas around Britain,
Speaker 1: with several high profile attacks, including one resulting in a
Speaker 1: passenger ship being targeted and destroyed, with all the passengers
Speaker 1: aboard passing away, including children. So Lamar began to think
Speaker 1: about ways that she might be able to help Britain.
Speaker 1: Because at this time the United States was not in
Speaker 1: World War Two. One of the big problems that the
Speaker 1: Allies were facing at that point was that the submarines
Speaker 1: were able to avoid torpedoes effectively enough to pose as
Speaker 1: a massive threat. So Hetty Lamar had this idea for
Speaker 1: a radio controlled torpedo. The big challenge with radio communications
Speaker 1: is that they aren't secure on their own. If I
Speaker 1: am communicating with you on a radio, freak and see
Speaker 1: anyone with a receiver can tune into that frequency and
Speaker 1: listen into that conversation. So unless I speak in some
Speaker 1: sort of code, everything I say will be clearly heard
Speaker 1: and understood on your end. Further, if someone else wants
Speaker 1: to ruin my attempts to communicate with you, they could
Speaker 1: start transmitting noise on that same frequency, uh, the one
Speaker 1: that I am using to try and communicate with you.
Speaker 1: And if they just use more transmitter power than I
Speaker 1: am using, whichever signal is the strongest will win out,
Speaker 1: so their signal will overpower mine, and that's what we
Speaker 1: call jamming. Jamming just involves flooding the frequency band with
Speaker 1: a stronger transmission signal. Now, that was the challenge that
Speaker 1: engineers were facing with radio controlled torpedoes. If they settled
Speaker 1: on a control frequency and they sent the torpedo on
Speaker 1: its way, and then they started to send commands like
Speaker 1: rut or left or rut or right in order to
Speaker 1: turn the torpedo, the Germans could potentially pick up on
Speaker 1: at radio frequency and then start broadcasting on that same frequency,
Speaker 1: and they could broadcast nonsense, jamming the signal and preventing
Speaker 1: the Allies from being able to control this torpedo. Lamar's
Speaker 1: idea was to use a system that would allow you
Speaker 1: to change frequencies as you transmit information. So you might
Speaker 1: start your commands using a frequency like three killer hurts,
Speaker 1: then jump up the three hurts, then back down to
Speaker 1: three hurts, and so on and so forth as you're transmitting.
Speaker 1: And because you are varying the frequency rapidly, your enemies
Speaker 1: are not likely to discover which frequency you're using at
Speaker 1: any given time, and they can't predict which frequency you're
Speaker 1: going to use next. So if you keep each section
Speaker 1: of transmission really short, you're able to send commands to
Speaker 1: your torpedo without fear of the enemy jamming your signal
Speaker 1: because they don't know which signal to use, which frequency
Speaker 1: to use. But there's a big trick to this. You
Speaker 1: have to devise some way to have your receiver changed
Speaker 1: to tune into the podcast frequency at the same time. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the transmitter and the receiver both need
Speaker 1: to be working on that same channel, and then you
Speaker 1: have to switch channels in a way that appears to
Speaker 1: be random, but it has to be perfectly synchronized. Otherwise
Speaker 1: your broadcast is going to start speaking in languages that
Speaker 1: your receiver can't understand. So they both have to change
Speaker 1: to the same frequencies at the same time, and that
Speaker 1: was a real challenge. How do you do that well?
Speaker 1: Lamar may have gotten a little inspiration from a relatively
Speaker 1: new technology back in the late nineteen thirties, the remote control,
Speaker 1: specifically the phil Co Mystery Remote Radio Control, which debuted
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine. It was the first wireless remote
Speaker 1: for a radio. Previous manufacturers had played with wired remotes
Speaker 1: so they would still be connected to a radio by
Speaker 1: a cable, and that would let you change stations without
Speaker 1: you know, having to walk all the way across the
Speaker 1: room to the actual radio set. The Philco Mystery radio
Speaker 1: control looks a little bit like a wooden box with
Speaker 1: an old fashioned rotary telephone dial set into it, but
Speaker 1: it didn't have a hand set, so it's not like
Speaker 1: a telephone with a with a handset that you would
Speaker 1: hold and then you dial on this rotary dial. Instead,
Speaker 1: it was just the box and the dial on it,
Speaker 1: and depending on what you had, you might have labels
Speaker 1: on that dial that correspond with the radio stations that
Speaker 1: are in your area, So there would be the call
Speaker 1: signs for each of those radio stations, and you would
Speaker 1: put your finger in the hole for the radio station
Speaker 1: that you want and dial it, and that would tune
Speaker 1: the radio across the room to whatever the station was
Speaker 1: of your choice. Lamar saw that and thought, well, if
Speaker 1: we could come up with a means to allow a
Speaker 1: uh A radio set to tune in this way, maybe
Speaker 1: we could use that same sort of technology for a torpedo.
Speaker 1: We would be in business if we could do this.
Speaker 1: But while she had a great idea. She didn't have
Speaker 1: any mechanical engineering or ttrical engineering training, so she ran
Speaker 1: up against the extent of her knowledge. However, she did
Speaker 1: talk about her idea with a friend of hers named
Speaker 1: George An Tile, who would add another piece to this concept.
Speaker 1: And Tile was born in nineteen hundred in Trenton, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: He also was not an electrical engineer or a mechanical engineer.
Speaker 1: He finished school or dropped out, depending upon how you
Speaker 1: read it when he was fifteen years old. He was
Speaker 1: a musician and a composer. He became interested in avant
Speaker 1: garde performances and eventually composed a piece called Le Ballet mechanique,
Speaker 1: which was a piece scored for player pianos and other
Speaker 1: devices as well as actual musicians. He wrote the piece
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty four, and it's a fairly jarring piece
Speaker 1: of music. You can actually find recordings of it online
Speaker 1: and listen to it, and it's not easy listening. But
Speaker 1: and Tile synchronized the player pianos so that they would
Speaker 1: play in time properly with each other and with the
Speaker 1: rest of the musicians. And it was this idea that
Speaker 1: would be valuable to Lamar's concept. And now I get
Speaker 1: to talk about how player pianos work, which I did
Speaker 1: not anticipate when I chose this topic. So you may
Speaker 1: have seen a player piano in person or on television
Speaker 1: or in films, particularly in movies set in the Old West.
Speaker 1: They tend to be on those These are the pianos
Speaker 1: that always have those rolls of paper in them. Uh.
Speaker 1: There there stand upright pianos, and you can see these
Speaker 1: rolls of paper. The paper has little holes cut out
Speaker 1: in patterns on it, and obviously those holes correspond with notes.
Speaker 1: But how does it actually work in a classic player
Speaker 1: piano or pianola. That's what they're also known as. Everything
Speaker 1: is dependent upon new matics, which is a system that
Speaker 1: uses air to move things mechanically. Typically, a player piano
Speaker 1: has foot pedals, and if you pump the foot pedals,
Speaker 1: you power bellows that are inside the player piano. But
Speaker 1: you're not pumping air into the system. You're actually create
Speaker 1: eating a vacuum. You're sucking air out of the system.
Speaker 1: And if you were to take the roll of paper
Speaker 1: off of the piano, you would see underneath it there's
Speaker 1: kind of a horizontal bar that's mounted at about I height.
Speaker 1: Typically on player pianos and has a bunch of holes
Speaker 1: cut into the bar. It might be a brass bar
Speaker 1: or something like that, and there will be little holes
Speaker 1: cut in through this. Those holes will correspond with notes.
Speaker 1: Each hole connects to a tube and the tube runs
Speaker 1: to a specific note. More on that in a second.
Speaker 1: So the paper acts as a seal over those holes.
Speaker 1: So when the paper turns and the holes in the
Speaker 1: paper line up with the holes in the bar mounted
Speaker 1: on the piano, air can pass through from outside through
Speaker 1: the hole into the player piano. Because remember there's a
Speaker 1: vacuum inside the system, so it's constantly sucking against that paper,
Speaker 1: So whenever there's a hole in the paper, air can
Speaker 1: come through. The air travels through the tube to the
Speaker 1: individual note and inflates a tiny bellows. Each note has
Speaker 1: its own set of bellows, and that in turn sets
Speaker 1: forth a motion that is translated by several levered elements
Speaker 1: that ultimately ends with a hammer striking the respective string
Speaker 1: and producing the note. So each time a hole in
Speaker 1: the paper passes over this bar, this happens. And some
Speaker 1: musicians like Antile began to compose music for player pianos,
Speaker 1: in particular because they could also play more notes at
Speaker 1: one time than a single human musician ever. Could you
Speaker 1: have eighty eight keys on a piano, You could do
Speaker 1: eighty eight holes next to each other, and you could
Speaker 1: have all eighty eight keys play at the same time,
Speaker 1: so you could play more notes than a human being
Speaker 1: could ever manage his or her own self. So some
Speaker 1: people began to use that as a means of composing
Speaker 1: music for a piano that a human could never play,
Speaker 1: at least not by themselves. So if you want to
Speaker 1: hear one of my favorite versions of this, you can
Speaker 1: search for Gershwin plays Gershwin and listen for Rhapsody in Blue,
Speaker 1: which is one of the Gershwin's most famous pieces. The
Speaker 1: recording was made by taking a role of piano paper
Speaker 1: that was designed by Gershwin himself of his famous composition,
Speaker 1: and then they digitized the information. They took all the
Speaker 1: information from the player piano role and they converted that
Speaker 1: into digital information. They added in some dynamics because that
Speaker 1: was not in the player piano role. In other words,
Speaker 1: there was no way of telling the difference between a
Speaker 1: hard note and a soft note, but they added the
Speaker 1: information in. So there's a little bit of extra info
Speaker 1: that was added into this stuff, and then they ended
Speaker 1: up playing it back on the equivalent of a high
Speaker 1: tech player piano, and it's pretty phenomenal stuff. An Tile
Speaker 1: had synchronized player pianos simply by making sure the pianos
Speaker 1: were set up to the right speed, as you could
Speaker 1: use different levers to engage gears for a faster or
Speaker 1: slower rotation of the role of piano paper. That would
Speaker 1: be dependent upon the needs of the piece. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you had something that needed to be played at
Speaker 1: a slight slower tempo, you could adjust the player piano
Speaker 1: to roll back the paper at a slower speed. If
Speaker 1: you need something faster, you could change that up too.
Speaker 1: And then he had to make sure that he was
Speaker 1: starting all the pianos all at the same time. So
Speaker 1: why not take this system one that worked for player
Speaker 1: pianos and poured it over to a torpedo control system.
Speaker 1: Instead of notes, the holes in the paper would correspond
Speaker 1: with radio frequencies, specific frequencies in a whole band. The
Speaker 1: technology already existed to create the roles of paper because
Speaker 1: they were used in in player pianos and lamar and
Speaker 1: and Tile's proposal was to use those A eight radio frequencies,
Speaker 1: just like a piano has. A standard piano has eight
Speaker 1: eight keys, fifty two white keys, and thirty six black keys.
Speaker 1: Unlike a typical player piano song, you'd really only need
Speaker 1: to engage one frequency at a time, So it's not
Speaker 1: like you would pull an actual song, uh that already
Speaker 1: existed in player piano form. You're not gonna take Mary
Speaker 1: had a little lamb off the shelf and plug one
Speaker 1: copy into a torpedo and another into a guidance system
Speaker 1: and then use that to steer your torpedo to a target.
Speaker 1: But the basic idea was the same. Lamar and Antile
Speaker 1: sent their idea to the National Inventors Council in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. This organization grew out of the Department of
Speaker 1: Commerce's Office of Technical Services. It was sort of a
Speaker 1: predecessor for DARPA in some ways, as the inventions were
Speaker 1: meant to aid the efforts of national defense and the
Speaker 1: military in general. The Council liked what they saw in
Speaker 1: the proposal, and they put Antile and Lamar in touch
Speaker 1: with an electronics expert at cal Tech. Now we're gonna
Speaker 1: take another quick break, but when we come back, I'll
Speaker 1: talk more about what came of this collaboration and how
Speaker 1: this incredible idea was treated in the world of the military.
Speaker 1: But first, let's take a quick break and thank our sponsor,
Speaker 1: Heavy Lamar, under the name Heady Keisler. Marquis filed for
Speaker 1: a patent for her system as co inventor with George
Speaker 1: Antile on June tenth one. The Patent Office would grant
Speaker 1: the patent on August eleven, two and the title of
Speaker 1: the patent is secret Communication System. You can read it
Speaker 1: if you like, you just go to a patent search.
Speaker 1: The number is two million, two seven. The patent is
Speaker 1: actually pretty easy to read compared to a lot of
Speaker 1: other patents, particularly more recent ones. I've gone through a
Speaker 1: lot of patents as a podcaster of tech stuff, but
Speaker 1: this one is pretty straightforward and incredibly clever. Here's how
Speaker 1: their system would have worked both your transmitter and your
Speaker 1: receiver uh, which in this patent was a torpedo. Specifically,
Speaker 1: they referred to it as a torpedo, but they also
Speaker 1: explain within the patent itself that the system could be
Speaker 1: adapted to other things. Would have identical rolls of paper
Speaker 1: with holes in the paper representing specific frequencies up to
Speaker 1: eighty eight in number. The paper rolls did not contain
Speaker 1: any actual commands themselves. That wouldn't make any sense. They
Speaker 1: just made sure there was a channel of communication that
Speaker 1: was open, so those holes would make sure the transmitter
Speaker 1: and receiver were connected. Commands would actually be sent by
Speaker 1: an operator. It wouldn't make any sense to pre program
Speaker 1: commands in because it would all be situational. Right you're
Speaker 1: you're trying to steer a torpedo. You can't predict in
Speaker 1: advance which way you're going to need to steer the torpedoes.
Speaker 1: So this was all about just creating that open channel
Speaker 1: of communication that could not easily be jammed by the enemy.
Speaker 1: The patent points out that the system could work not
Speaker 1: only aboard a ship with a torpedo, but also a
Speaker 1: plane and a torpedo. So you could have a plane
Speaker 1: with a synchronized system issuing commands to the torpedo over
Speaker 1: in the air. So you could have a plane monitoring
Speaker 1: the pathway of the torpedo and taking over and commanding
Speaker 1: it to turn laughter, turn right, or however it needs
Speaker 1: to go. To synchronize the two systems, the patent suggested
Speaker 1: a method that would include solenoids held into place by
Speaker 1: electric current. So a solenoid is a type of electro magnet.
Speaker 1: It's typically a coil wound in a helix and it
Speaker 1: connect as a transducer that turns energy into linear motion.
Speaker 1: So think of a piston and it has an electro
Speaker 1: magnet inside the piston. So when you have current running
Speaker 1: through the electro magnet, the coil moves to one end
Speaker 1: of the piston and sort of locks into place because
Speaker 1: that's where the magnetic force is pushing or pulling the coil.
Speaker 1: If the electrical current is broken, the electro magnet turns
Speaker 1: off and the solenoid is unlocked. It moves into the
Speaker 1: opposite direction, and the patent the invention describes such a
Speaker 1: solenoid that holds a pin in place, and when the
Speaker 1: pin is pulled out of the device, a clockwork motor
Speaker 1: turns the paper roll. So a battery would provide current
Speaker 1: two pens in both the transmitting and the receiving stations,
Speaker 1: so both aboard the ship or the plane and aboard
Speaker 1: the torpedo. Upon firing the torpedo, this electrical connection breaks
Speaker 1: and the pens release, which start the electric motors in
Speaker 1: both stations and spends the paper rolls in their respective
Speaker 1: UH spaces, whether it's on the plane or on the
Speaker 1: ship or in the torpedo, at the same rate of speed,
Speaker 1: and that synchronizes them. Not all of those eight frequencies
Speaker 1: wouldn't be necessary for the receiver. In fact, the patent
Speaker 1: suggests that the transmitter include frequencies that the receiver cannot
Speaker 1: physically detect. Now it's not so you send extra information.
Speaker 1: It's actually, well, I guess in the way it is
Speaker 1: to send extra information, but specifically to confuse the enemy.
Speaker 1: So if the Germans were to pin up these signals,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't know which signals represented a real open channel
Speaker 1: between the ship and the torpedo, for example, or which
Speaker 1: ones were dummy frequencies that we're coming from the ship
Speaker 1: but could not be picked up by the torpedo. By
Speaker 1: transmitting across both, you would reduce the chance the enemy
Speaker 1: would catch onto which signals are important, Which is similar
Speaker 1: to the way baseball players will use various signals to
Speaker 1: communicate with each other, such as when a pitching coach
Speaker 1: sends a message to a baseball pitcher. You'll see this
Speaker 1: whole series of hand motions that get increasingly weird and bizarre.
Speaker 1: Some of those signals are just filler. They're meant to
Speaker 1: confound the imposing teams, so they don't know which of
Speaker 1: the signals are actually meaningful. In order to indicate which
Speaker 1: signals are real and which ones aren't, the invention also
Speaker 1: included a lamp for the transmitter station that would indicate
Speaker 1: if there was a real channel of communication open or not,
Speaker 1: and operators were meant to keep an eye on the
Speaker 1: lamp so they would know whether the com munications with
Speaker 1: the receiver were really active. They could send commands during
Speaker 1: times when the communication wasn't active in order to confound
Speaker 1: the enemy, but they would have to keep in mind
Speaker 1: those were not quote unquote real commands. They were going
Speaker 1: out to a deaf audience. It was only when the
Speaker 1: communication channel was complete on both sides that they could
Speaker 1: actually send a command to the torpedo that would be
Speaker 1: acted upon. As for the physical operations, they were remarkably
Speaker 1: similar to a player piano. They would use electric pumps
Speaker 1: to suck the air from the system, creating the same
Speaker 1: sort of vacuum as you would find in player pianos,
Speaker 1: although those tended to be foot pedal and bellows type systems.
Speaker 1: When the holes in the paper would pass over their
Speaker 1: respective holes in the bar in the system, air would
Speaker 1: pass through. On the other end of the transmitter side
Speaker 1: are a series of pistons with springs inside them. The
Speaker 1: springs are coiled with stored potential energy, but the vacuum
Speaker 1: in the system prevents the springs from extending, so the
Speaker 1: pistons would be retracted against the springs because the vacuum
Speaker 1: is sucking all of the pistons to their their compressed state.
Speaker 1: When air would be allowed to pass through one of
Speaker 1: those pistons, the vacuum would be broken, the spring would extend,
Speaker 1: and that would cause the piston to move up and
Speaker 1: close a switch which would activate that specific frequency. And
Speaker 1: then once the hole would pass over, like once the
Speaker 1: hole in the paper would pass away and it would
Speaker 1: be sealed again, the vacuum would re establish and the
Speaker 1: piston would retract, and so it would change to a
Speaker 1: different frequency, whichever frequency was active for that specific moment.
Speaker 1: The design was an elegant solution to a very real problem,
Speaker 1: and Lamar and Until submitted their idea to the United
Speaker 1: States Navy. In our next episode, we'll talk about what
Speaker 1: happened next and how that concept, which Lamar dubbed frequency hopping,
Speaker 1: would become a principle in multiple technologies today. There were
Speaker 1: other people who had suggested concepts either similar to frequency
Speaker 1: hopping or pretty much the same idea, But hey, Lamar's
Speaker 1: presentation showed a practical approach as to how to accomplish this,
Speaker 1: And it takes a special kind of thinking to go
Speaker 1: from hypothetical concept to a practical idea. So I don't
Speaker 1: mean to suggest that Hetty Lamar's notion of frequency hopping
Speaker 1: was the one and only time anyone ever came up
Speaker 1: with us. There were earlier ones. They were not widely publicized,
Speaker 1: but they did exist if you knew where to look
Speaker 1: for them. But it was still appears to me that
Speaker 1: Lamar pretty much came up with this idea on her own.
Speaker 1: She was not aware of these other uh hypothesized versions
Speaker 1: of frequency hopping, and no one had called it that yet.
Speaker 1: Before I signed off in this episode, I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention one of the sources that I referenced heavily while
Speaker 1: I was putting together my research, and that is a
Speaker 1: documentary about Hetty Lamar's life called Bombshell, and it focuses
Speaker 1: not just on her work in developing equency hopping, but
Speaker 1: also her work as an actress, her life in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: her trials and tribulations, her various marriages, her family life,
Speaker 1: her struggle with drug addiction. It's a fascinating story. So
Speaker 1: if you have the opportunity, I highly recommend checking out
Speaker 1: the documentary. Again, it's called Bombshell. Well, that wraps up
Speaker 1: this particular episode. In our next one, we will continue
Speaker 1: the story and we'll also look at some other interesting
Speaker 1: inventions that celebrities have have put forward over the years.
Speaker 1: If you guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: send me a message. You can email me at tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com or drop me
Speaker 1: a message on Twitter or Facebook. The handle at both
Speaker 1: of those is tech Stuff hs W. Don't forget to
Speaker 1: follow us on Instagram and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: about Hey Lamar really soon for more on this and
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