WEBVTT - Hopping with Hedy Lamarr 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.800 stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.000 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:19.800 at how Stuff Works and I love all things tech. 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:24.439 And today we're gonna talk about a person who was 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:29.440 very important in technology, although it was not acknowledged or 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:34.280 really widely known for many decades after her actual contribution. 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:37.960 And this comes from several listeners who have requested that 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:41.960 I cover Hetty Lamar. So from the nineteen thirties until 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:46.840 ninety head vig Ava Keisler, better known in the United 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.520 States as Hetty Lamar, appeared in feature films like Boomtown, 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:55.120 Lady of the Tropics, and Tortilla Flat. She played Delilah 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:58.000 in Samson and Delilah and the Cecil B. De Mill 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:03.160 epic film. He acted opposite people like Jimmy Stewart and 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.760 Judy Garland and Zigfried Girl or Zigfeld Girl, I should 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:10.280 say not Zigfried. She was in several films and TV shows, 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:13.240 but more importantly to text Stuff. She made important contributions 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:17.600 to technology that for decades was completely unknown by the 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:21.920 general public and only relatively recently has been part of 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:26.400 the general discussion essentially since about n or So. In 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:29.160 this episode, I'm going to talk a lot about hay 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:32.680 Lamar's life, not just her work in technology. And I'm 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:35.280 doing this because I think it's really important to get 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:38.240 an understanding of what her world was like and what 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:40.640 it must have been like to come up with a 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:45.839 fiendishly clever and useful idea that would go unacknowledged for decades. 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:51.760 Her story is in many ways tragic, but to understand 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:54.760 that tragedy, we really need to learn about her life 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:59.880 in general. So Hetty Lamar was born on November nine 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:04.080 in Vienna, Austria, to a well to do Jewish family. 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:07.920 Her father was a banker and a technology enthusiast, and 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:11.440 as a child, Lamar was known to be really curious 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:16.320 and inquisitive and drawn to the sciences, particularly chemistry. She 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:20.440 enjoyed studying, and she enjoyed experimenting with stuff. At the 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:23.200 age of five, she took apart a music box to 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:26.800 see how it worked, and then meticulously reassembled it so 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:30.000 that it would work again. Reportedly, she spent a lot 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:33.600 of time talking with her father, emil Keisler, in an 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:36.280 effort to learn how stuff works. Sounds like she would 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:38.960 have really liked the website I wrote for. She wanted 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:43.280 to know stuff about electricity, how street cars worked, how 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:46.600 power plants work, and when she grew into a teenager, 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:51.560 she also noticed that people started treating her differently. She 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:54.240 was a beautiful young woman, and she could not help 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:57.720 but notice that she had a real effect on other 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:01.680 people when she was in their presence, particular really among men, 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:05.480 and she found she kind of liked having this sort 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:09.280 of power and effect on people. At the age of sixteen, 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:13.399 she started modeling for photographers, including doing some nude modeling, 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:17.040 and in an interview, Lamar referred to herself as a 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:22.440 L'Enfant terrible child. In other words, as a French expression, 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:25.799 and it typically means a child who speaks without any 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:29.680 kind of filter, someone who might just speak what they're 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.720 thinking immediately without considering it's a fact, and thus potentially 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:37.280 embarrassing an adult nearby. For example, it happened to me 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:40.160 personally when I was in a grocery store and a 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:43.360 mom and her little son are walking past me, and 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:45.880 the little son looks at me and looks at his 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:51.480 mom and says, Mommy, that man has no hair. Well, 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:55.320 that's true. I'm bald, but I know that I'm familiar 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:57.440 with it. It's not a shock to my system. I've 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:00.280 been living that way for two decades. But the mother 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:03.440 was horrified that her child would say something like that 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:07.560 in public, an earshot of me. I thought it was 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:11.640 funny because it was just an observation and it didn't 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:13.920 bother me at all. But that's sort of the kind 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:16.960 of thing they mean. But the expression can also refer 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:20.440 to someone in the creative arts, like an actor or 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:24.320 a dancer, or an artist or a photographer, someone who 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:28.279 thinks outside the norm, who is more avant garde and 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:33.599 more daring and potentially more offensive as a result, someone 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:37.840 who goes against the standard and therefore can end up 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:42.159 stirring up trouble. She referred to herself in this context. 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:45.600 In n three, when she was just nineteen years old, 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:50.640 she was cast in a Czech Austrian film called Ecstasy. 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:54.200 This movie became infamous at the time for one thing. 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:57.279 Henny Lamar appears nude in the film and a couple 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:00.360 of different scenes, and there was also a sex singing 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:04.520 in that movie that was considered positively scandalous by the 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:08.279 standards of the day, Lamar would earn for herself a 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:12.720 reputation that would follow her throughout her life, largely because 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:16.000 of that movie. Unfairly, i would say, especially when you 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:20.960 compare it to films today. It was nothing particularly uh 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:25.839 racy by a lot of today's R rated movie standards, 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:30.320 but at the time it was considered absolutely scandalous. She 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:34.479 also had to reconcile with her father, whom she loved dearly. 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:36.400 In fact, she would later say in her life that 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:39.720 no man she ever was attached to could measure up 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:42.960 to her father. He was extremely upset by the film 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:46.240 and the scandal, and then, sort of as a way 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:49.720 to kind of redeem herself in a sense, she went 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:54.159 on to perform in a prestigious stage production, a very 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:59.080 respectful stage production, and that kind of helped heal her reputation, 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:02.760 at least for the time being. She also met and 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:08.560 then married a wealthy arms manufacturer named Fritz Mandel, who 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:11.760 was fourteen years older than she was, so she was nineteen, 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:16.359 he was thirty three. According to interviews, several historians have 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:20.840 suggested that Lamar liked the thought of being an influential 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:25.359 man's wife. She found that idea appealing, but she soon 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:29.600 found Mandel to be controlling and domineering. He was also 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:34.000 supplying weapons to Germany, which meant he was weaponizing the 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:38.880 Nazi Party. This was early in the history of the 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:42.080 Nazi Party in Germany. Hitler would not become fewer until 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:47.200 August second, nineteen thirty four. Mandel, though Jewish, was seen 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:51.159 as incredibly important for Germany's plans, and while Hitler probably 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:55.160 never visited Mandel's estate personally because he would not want 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:59.320 to be captured on film as associating with someone who 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:03.480 was Jewish, it is true that Mussolini was a house 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:08.160 guest of Mandel's. Fritz was reportedly a very jealous man, 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:14.520 constantly suspecting Hetty lamar Uh, suspecting his wife of infidelity, 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:17.680 and he tried to buy up all the prints of 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:20.760 the film Ecstasy in order to suppress the movie. He 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:24.480 didn't want other people seeing his wife nude on film, 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:29.320 but really that just gave the filmmakers more incentive to 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:32.920 make more prints of the negative because he kept on 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:36.440 buying them, so there was already made audience, even if 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:39.160 it was just a one person. He spent more than 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:42.080 a couple hundred thousand dollars buying up prints of this movie, 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:43.920 and they just kept printing up more, and so finally 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:47.640 he kind of gave up on that. The two remained 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:51.760 married for four years, but by nineteen thirty seven, tensions 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:56.640 were running high in Europe and in her household. Hitler 0:07:56.680 --> 0:08:00.400 had already begun his anti Semitic policies by the time, 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:04.640 though Mandel was again sort of insulated and protected by 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:09.400 his occupation as an armament's manufacturer. But Hetty's father, Emil, 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:12.920 was distraught by what was going on in the world, 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:16.040 and the stress was really getting to him. He actually 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:18.800 would die of a heart attack that year, and that 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:23.480 devastated Hetty. Hetty had decided that by this time she 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:27.920 had to get away. She was scared, she was angry, 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:30.640 she was disgusted by what was happening in Europe and 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:34.480 Hitler's campaign against Jewish people, and so one evening she 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:38.280 decided to escape from Mandel's home and flee. And there 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:41.959 are different accounts of how she managed this, including some 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:46.280 in which she supposedly drugged a maid, used some sleeping 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:49.520 powder mixed in a drink and gave it to the maid, 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:52.880 which made her fall unconscious, and then she ended up 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:55.840 switching places with the maid, dressing in the maid's outfit, 0:08:56.360 --> 0:09:00.840 and then making her escape that night. Whatever that she used, 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:05.559 she did flee to England. In England, she had the 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:08.720 good fortune to run into Louis B. Meyer, the co 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:13.400 founder of MGM Studios. Meyer was touring England looking for 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:16.800 European talent who were fleeing the continent. So he was 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:21.000 kind of taking advantage of a really bad situation and saying, hey, 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:23.520 if things are too hot here, you should come to America. 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:27.560 Sign with me, become an actor in my studio, and 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:30.520 I'll give you a living. So he offered Lamar the 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:35.000 princely sum of one five dollars per week if she 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:38.280 would sign on to a studio. Now, a quick word 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:43.559 about this. From the nineteen twenties until about the nineteen sixties, 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:46.680 movie studios had sort of a death grip on film 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:51.760 stars and directors and movie theaters. Talent would sign contracts 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:55.160 with a specific movie studio and that would guarantee a 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:58.400 certain number of films or pictures for that studio, and 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:00.600 they would be locked in. They could not make movies 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:04.080 for competing studios unless there was an agreement between the 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:08.479 two studios, and some sort of exchange. So the studios 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:12.080 also would own chains of theaters, and they would have 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:15.200 their own films shown in those theaters and not their 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:18.920 competitors films. There were some independent theater owners in the 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:22.680 United States at that time, but the movie studios would 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:28.199 also end up leveraging their power over those independent outlets 0:10:28.240 --> 0:10:30.760 as well. What they would do is something called a 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:34.920 a block booking deal. Block Booking was where let's say 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:38.679 you're an independent film theater operator and you really want 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:43.560 to UH exhibit Gone with the Wind, and you really 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:45.320 need to have a print of Gone with the Wind 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:47.800 because you want to show it in your theater. Block 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:51.640 Booking would mean that if you wanted to show that movie, 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:54.720 the movie studio would say, all right, well, you can 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.400 buy Gone with the windprint for X amount of dollars, 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:01.480 but you also have to show these other four movies 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:05.960 that were bundling with that film, and you would be 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:08.520 forced to take on all those movies and try to 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:12.200 show all of those movies at your theater. That practice 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:16.600 is ultimately what brought down the whole studio system, because 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:20.760 there was an antitrust lawsuit in the UH well started 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:25.240 in the thirties, but really it didn't completely develop until 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:28.640 the fifties, and at that point the movie studio system 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:31.360 started to break apart, and eventually the studios had to 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:33.920 stop this practice, and so you no longer have this 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:37.080 system where a movie studio will sign an actor to 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:40.960 a certain number of pictures. You have franchises that will 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:44.520 do that, like Star Wars or the Marvel films, where 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:46.959 they'll sign an actor and it will guarantee a certain 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:50.440 number of films within that franchise. But they are no 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:56.200 longer a studio exclusive. They can still do films with 0:11:56.280 --> 0:11:59.640 other film studios. But back in Hetty's day, that wasn't 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:02.800 the case, and a hud dollars a week did not 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:05.559 seem like it was going to be enough for her. 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:09.320 Because here's a woman who came from a privileged background. 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:12.520 She grew up in a wealthy household in Austria. She 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:17.080 then married a wealthy man, the armament's manufacturer. She still 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.199 had a great deal of money and jewels and really 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:23.400 nice clothing on her. She didn't just flee with the 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:27.920 clothes on her back. She really had pretty pretty swanky 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:33.079 luggage on her at the same time. So she knew 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:36.520 that dollars wasn't gonna be That wasn't gonna cut it, 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:39.400 and so she told Meyer, no thanks, I'm not going 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:42.760 to take that deal. However, she did want to go 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:45.240 to America and she did want to work in movies. 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:48.320 So what she did was she found out what boat 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:52.160 Meyer was taking back from England to return to the 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:55.960 United States and booked herself on the same ship. Then 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:59.080 she made it a point to walk by him as 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:03.040 frequently as she hood in different outfits, including one where 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:05.880 she was just dressed to the nines, decked out in 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:10.520 the most amazing gown, and Meyer said, I have to 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:14.160 have this actress in my studio. So he went back 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:16.400 to her and gave her a new offer of five 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:20.560 dollars per week, which she accepted. In America, she took 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:24.000 on the stage name of Hetty Lamar, which they figured 0:13:24.080 --> 0:13:26.840 was a better name. At the time, there was a 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:30.960 lot of fear on Myers part of having actors and 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:33.800 actresses who had Jewish last names, and this is just 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:38.280 an unfortunate side effect of the time, so she ended 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.360 up adopting the name Hetty Lamar as her stage name. 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:46.079 She dated several prominent men, including Howard Hughes, the businessman, 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:51.040 pilot film director and later on kind of eccentric. I 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:53.520 guess is the word you use when you're that wealthy, 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:58.080 but he was famously odd. Hughes and Lamar struck up 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:01.319 a friendship. Lamar had built an inventing table in her 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:04.760 own home. She still enjoyed experimenting and tinkering with stuff, 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:07.440 and when Howard Hughes found out, he ended up giving 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.360 her a gift of a smaller inventing table, one that 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:13.320 was semi portable that she could set up in something 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:15.320 like a movie trailer, so when she was on a 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:17.840 movie shoot she could have a little inventing table in 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.200 her dressing room trailer and have a place to kind 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:24.600 of unwind and tinker with things. There's actually a story 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:26.840 about Hughes and Lamar that I want to mention before 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:30.680 I go to break. Hughes was working hard on building airplanes. 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:33.480 He was a pilot, but he also had a design 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:36.280 desire to create a plane that was really fast and maneuverable, 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:40.200 largely because he anticipated that the United States military was 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:42.160 going to have a need of them with the possibility 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.880 of war in Europe looming. But his designs were not 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:48.680 producing the results he wanted, so Lamar took a look 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:52.280 at these planes which had wings that ended in sort 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:55.280 of a squared off shape. They kind of look like 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:59.160 like flat rectangles extending out from the sides of the plane, 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:01.680 and then a it struck her as wrong. So she 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:04.920 went out and bought books on fish and birds and 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:08.720 started studying their fins and their wings respectively, and started 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:12.400 looking for the fastest animals in those categories, and then 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:15.000 looking at their wings and saying how are their fins 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:17.160 and saying how are they shaped? How does that help 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.640 this animal move through the air through the water. And 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:23.840 then she sketched out a wing for an airplane based 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:26.440 on those shapes and told Hughes he would have better 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.640 luck with a similar design, and he said that she 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:33.840 was a genius. Now, in the next section, I'm going 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:38.160 to talk more about the technology that Lamar helped invent 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:40.600 and why it was so important, But first let's take 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:51.160 a quick break to thank our sponsor Hetty. Lamar would 0:15:51.200 --> 0:15:55.040 then go on to marry a screenwriter named Gene Markis 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:58.160 in nineteen thirty nine. He would be the second of 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:02.800 six husbands. Lamar had a tendency to attract men to her, 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:05.840 but it seems most of those men didn't really know 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:09.400 her as a person. They saw her beauty. That's what 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:11.760 they fixated upon. So I'm not going to go through 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:14.680 each and every marriage because that would be excessive and 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:17.440 far beyond what we need to talk about in this show. 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:20.200 But I think it's good to know she had trouble 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:23.680 finding someone she fit with because it gives a sense 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:26.560 of the frustration and isolation she must have felt throughout 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:30.760 her life. We we had seen at this point that 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:33.680 war was inevitable. War had actually started to break out 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:37.240 in Europe, and by nine that war was well under way, 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:42.920 and Lamar was ordered by Meyer to never mention her religion. Remember, 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:47.240 Hetty Lamar grew up Jewish. Lamar seemed fine, at least 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.480 with leaving behind her Jewish identity. At least she didn't 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:53.040 seem to put up any kind of fuss about this 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:56.280 and never had a problem sort of moving beyond that. 0:16:56.360 --> 0:16:59.080 But she did very much want to find a way 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:01.920 to have her mother or join her in the United States. 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:06.400 Her mom had successfully fled Austria to arrive in England, 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:08.280 but she was kind of stuck there for the time being, 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:13.240 And meanwhile, German submarines were terrorizing the seas around Britain, 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:18.160 with several high profile attacks, including one resulting in a 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:22.560 passenger ship being targeted and destroyed, with all the passengers 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:28.040 aboard passing away, including children. So Lamar began to think 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:32.199 about ways that she might be able to help Britain. 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:34.840 Because at this time the United States was not in 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:37.840 World War Two. One of the big problems that the 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:40.800 Allies were facing at that point was that the submarines 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:44.920 were able to avoid torpedoes effectively enough to pose as 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:48.560 a massive threat. So Hetty Lamar had this idea for 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:53.919 a radio controlled torpedo. The big challenge with radio communications 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:57.280 is that they aren't secure on their own. If I 0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:00.560 am communicating with you on a radio, freak and see 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:04.480 anyone with a receiver can tune into that frequency and 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:07.959 listen into that conversation. So unless I speak in some 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:10.760 sort of code, everything I say will be clearly heard 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:14.600 and understood on your end. Further, if someone else wants 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:17.600 to ruin my attempts to communicate with you, they could 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:22.000 start transmitting noise on that same frequency, uh, the one 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:24.119 that I am using to try and communicate with you. 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:27.040 And if they just use more transmitter power than I 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:30.920 am using, whichever signal is the strongest will win out, 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:34.200 so their signal will overpower mine, and that's what we 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:39.520 call jamming. Jamming just involves flooding the frequency band with 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:43.040 a stronger transmission signal. Now, that was the challenge that 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:47.120 engineers were facing with radio controlled torpedoes. If they settled 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:50.280 on a control frequency and they sent the torpedo on 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.040 its way, and then they started to send commands like 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:55.240 rut or left or rut or right in order to 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:59.720 turn the torpedo, the Germans could potentially pick up on 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:04.200 at radio frequency and then start broadcasting on that same frequency, 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:08.000 and they could broadcast nonsense, jamming the signal and preventing 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:12.440 the Allies from being able to control this torpedo. Lamar's 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:14.600 idea was to use a system that would allow you 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:19.520 to change frequencies as you transmit information. So you might 0:19:19.600 --> 0:19:22.840 start your commands using a frequency like three killer hurts, 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:26.399 then jump up the three hurts, then back down to 0:19:26.480 --> 0:19:30.120 three hurts, and so on and so forth as you're transmitting. 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:34.240 And because you are varying the frequency rapidly, your enemies 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:37.159 are not likely to discover which frequency you're using at 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:39.880 any given time, and they can't predict which frequency you're 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:42.679 going to use next. So if you keep each section 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:46.240 of transmission really short, you're able to send commands to 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:49.399 your torpedo without fear of the enemy jamming your signal 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:52.680 because they don't know which signal to use, which frequency 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:55.080 to use. But there's a big trick to this. You 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:58.919 have to devise some way to have your receiver changed 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.359 to tune into the podcast frequency at the same time. So, 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:05.240 in other words, the transmitter and the receiver both need 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:08.439 to be working on that same channel, and then you 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:11.199 have to switch channels in a way that appears to 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:15.080 be random, but it has to be perfectly synchronized. Otherwise 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:18.080 your broadcast is going to start speaking in languages that 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:21.200 your receiver can't understand. So they both have to change 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:23.960 to the same frequencies at the same time, and that 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:26.840 was a real challenge. How do you do that well? 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:30.080 Lamar may have gotten a little inspiration from a relatively 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:34.280 new technology back in the late nineteen thirties, the remote control, 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:39.320 specifically the phil Co Mystery Remote Radio Control, which debuted 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:43.200 in nineteen thirty nine. It was the first wireless remote 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:47.800 for a radio. Previous manufacturers had played with wired remotes 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:50.399 so they would still be connected to a radio by 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:53.240 a cable, and that would let you change stations without 0:20:53.280 --> 0:20:54.960 you know, having to walk all the way across the 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:59.639 room to the actual radio set. The Philco Mystery radio 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:02.480 control looks a little bit like a wooden box with 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:07.119 an old fashioned rotary telephone dial set into it, but 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:09.080 it didn't have a hand set, so it's not like 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:11.320 a telephone with a with a handset that you would 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:14.480 hold and then you dial on this rotary dial. Instead, 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:16.080 it was just the box and the dial on it, 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:20.080 and depending on what you had, you might have labels 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:24.680 on that dial that correspond with the radio stations that 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:27.560 are in your area, So there would be the call 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:30.280 signs for each of those radio stations, and you would 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:34.119 put your finger in the hole for the radio station 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:37.159 that you want and dial it, and that would tune 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:41.439 the radio across the room to whatever the station was 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:44.320 of your choice. Lamar saw that and thought, well, if 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:46.119 we could come up with a means to allow a 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:50.720 uh A radio set to tune in this way, maybe 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:53.600 we could use that same sort of technology for a torpedo. 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:55.760 We would be in business if we could do this. 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:58.000 But while she had a great idea. She didn't have 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:02.119 any mechanical engineering or ttrical engineering training, so she ran 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:05.720 up against the extent of her knowledge. However, she did 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:08.480 talk about her idea with a friend of hers named 0:22:08.640 --> 0:22:13.520 George An Tile, who would add another piece to this concept. 0:22:14.119 --> 0:22:18.320 And Tile was born in nineteen hundred in Trenton, New Jersey. 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:22.360 He also was not an electrical engineer or a mechanical engineer. 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:26.199 He finished school or dropped out, depending upon how you 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:28.840 read it when he was fifteen years old. He was 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:32.680 a musician and a composer. He became interested in avant 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:37.800 garde performances and eventually composed a piece called Le Ballet mechanique, 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:41.320 which was a piece scored for player pianos and other 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:45.320 devices as well as actual musicians. He wrote the piece 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:48.600 in nineteen twenty four, and it's a fairly jarring piece 0:22:48.680 --> 0:22:51.640 of music. You can actually find recordings of it online 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:55.159 and listen to it, and it's not easy listening. But 0:22:55.520 --> 0:22:59.040 and Tile synchronized the player pianos so that they would 0:22:59.080 --> 0:23:01.919 play in time properly with each other and with the 0:23:01.960 --> 0:23:04.639 rest of the musicians. And it was this idea that 0:23:04.720 --> 0:23:07.760 would be valuable to Lamar's concept. And now I get 0:23:07.800 --> 0:23:10.640 to talk about how player pianos work, which I did 0:23:10.640 --> 0:23:14.480 not anticipate when I chose this topic. So you may 0:23:14.480 --> 0:23:16.960 have seen a player piano in person or on television 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:19.840 or in films, particularly in movies set in the Old West. 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:22.360 They tend to be on those These are the pianos 0:23:22.359 --> 0:23:25.000 that always have those rolls of paper in them. Uh. 0:23:25.080 --> 0:23:28.000 There there stand upright pianos, and you can see these 0:23:28.080 --> 0:23:30.480 rolls of paper. The paper has little holes cut out 0:23:30.680 --> 0:23:34.480 in patterns on it, and obviously those holes correspond with notes. 0:23:34.520 --> 0:23:37.280 But how does it actually work in a classic player 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:41.280 piano or pianola. That's what they're also known as. Everything 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:44.560 is dependent upon new matics, which is a system that 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:49.480 uses air to move things mechanically. Typically, a player piano 0:23:49.680 --> 0:23:53.360 has foot pedals, and if you pump the foot pedals, 0:23:53.440 --> 0:23:56.560 you power bellows that are inside the player piano. But 0:23:56.680 --> 0:23:59.920 you're not pumping air into the system. You're actually create 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:03.360 eating a vacuum. You're sucking air out of the system. 0:24:04.080 --> 0:24:07.120 And if you were to take the roll of paper 0:24:07.280 --> 0:24:10.440 off of the piano, you would see underneath it there's 0:24:10.520 --> 0:24:14.160