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 at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works and I love all things tech and
Speaker 1: in our last episode, I talked about actress Hetty Lamar
Speaker 1: and how she came to America just before World War
Speaker 1: Two erupted in Europe and how she co invented a
Speaker 1: form of secret communication via radio signals with composer George Antile.
Speaker 1: These two seemingly unlikely inventors proposed a method in which
Speaker 1: allied radio operators would be able to control something like
Speaker 1: a torpedo using radio signals without fear of having their
Speaker 1: operations jammed by enemy operators. The system made clever use
Speaker 1: of the same basic technology that player Pianos used, and
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard that episode, I urge you to
Speaker 1: check it out as it's a good starter for today's
Speaker 1: show and just a quick reminder. The system that Lamar
Speaker 1: and and Tile proposed would allow a radio transmitter and
Speaker 1: a paired receiver switch radio frequencies multiple times during a
Speaker 1: transmission in an effort to avoid frequency jamming. The trick
Speaker 1: was to create a system where the transmission antenna and
Speaker 1: the receiver could automatically tune to the appropriate frequencies on
Speaker 1: their own in such a way as to be unpredictable
Speaker 1: to enemies. To do that, you would need some sort
Speaker 1: of instructions that both systems could carry out in synchronization,
Speaker 1: and Tile supplied this mechanism in the form of paper
Speaker 1: rolls identical to the type used in player pianos, complete
Speaker 1: with the ability to tune into eighty eight different frequencies,
Speaker 1: just as a typical piano has eight keys. So Hetty
Speaker 1: Lamar and George Antile submitted their idea to the United
Speaker 1: States Navy. The Navy's response was less than enthusiastic. Essentially,
Speaker 1: the Navy said, we don't want to put player pianos
Speaker 1: in torpedoes, which seems like a pretty short sighted counterpoint.
Speaker 1: In a ddition, some modern historians have trouble believing Henny
Speaker 1: Lamar could have come up with this idea herself. Some
Speaker 1: have suggested that rather than invent the approach, she simply
Speaker 1: learned about it while she was still in Austria, while
Speaker 1: she was married to Fritz Mandel, and armament manufacturer who
Speaker 1: was supplying weapons to the Nazis, but according to a
Speaker 1: nine interview with Lamar, that simply wasn't true. She said
Speaker 1: she never learned anything about armaments from her husband, who
Speaker 1: preferred to keep his wife in relative seclusion. Personally, I
Speaker 1: think it is completely believable that Lamar came up with
Speaker 1: this idea, as she understood the potential that frequency hopping
Speaker 1: could provide for secret communications, but she lacked the mechanical
Speaker 1: and electrical engineering knowledge to make practical use of it, So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it's not like she came out of
Speaker 1: nowhere with a fully formed implementation of her idea. The
Speaker 1: military told Lamar that if she wanted to support the
Speaker 1: United States during the war, she should stop coming up
Speaker 1: with ideas and instead she should put her fame to
Speaker 1: use in selling war bonds. Lamar, believing the United States
Speaker 1: to be on the right side of the conflict, did
Speaker 1: just that. Her idea languished with other classified documents locked
Speaker 1: away in the United States Navy, and the reason that
Speaker 1: it was locked away was that while the Navy didn't
Speaker 1: plan on using it, they were concerned that some of
Speaker 1: this information could potentially give the enemy valuable information if it,
Speaker 1: in fact we're shared publicly, so it got put into
Speaker 1: secret storage. Essentially, she went on to perform for troops
Speaker 1: and raise money for the United States, reportedly raising the
Speaker 1: equivalent of more than twenty million dollars by some estimates.
Speaker 1: This was all before she herself was a citizen in
Speaker 1: the United States. She was not yet a cisen but
Speaker 1: she was raising money for the US. In two the
Speaker 1: United States government, in an act I can only describe
Speaker 1: as wicked, seized Lamar's patents and labeled her an enemy alien.
Speaker 1: Lamar was perplexed here. She had been participating in events
Speaker 1: to raise money for the United States, she had willingly
Speaker 1: submitted her patent to the United States military, and now
Speaker 1: she found herself labeled by that same government as an
Speaker 1: alien resident from a hostile country because she was originally
Speaker 1: from Austria. It was a pretty big insult on top
Speaker 1: of everything else. But Lamar kept on working in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: She produced her own film at a point when such
Speaker 1: a thing was unheard of. The studios didn't care for
Speaker 1: that one bit, as they had a pretty tight stranglehold
Speaker 1: on entertainment at the time, and no studio wanted actors
Speaker 1: to get big ideas about producing their own movies independently.
Speaker 1: The studios liked it, with the actors being entirely dependent
Speaker 1: upon the studio, so this was not something that was
Speaker 1: greeted with acclaim among studio executives at the time. She
Speaker 1: was able to bring her mother over to the States.
Speaker 1: If you remember, in the last episode, she was concerned
Speaker 1: her mom had fled Austria to England but had been
Speaker 1: stuck there for a while. But Hetty Lamar was able
Speaker 1: to get her mom to over to the United States,
Speaker 1: and she made a good deal of money when she
Speaker 1: started cecil b Demills, Samson and Delilah, but she would
Speaker 1: end up losing a lot of that money producing her
Speaker 1: own movies, which would be commercially unsuccessful. She was attempting
Speaker 1: to create roles for herself because she was frustrated that
Speaker 1: studios were giving her the same sort of roles over
Speaker 1: and over, which were essentially wicked temptresses, and she wanted
Speaker 1: to play different types of parts. So she made her
Speaker 1: own movies, but they ended up not doing so well
Speaker 1: and it almost bankrupted her. In nineteen Lamar would ask
Speaker 1: a friend of hers who was in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy if he might be able to find out whatever
Speaker 1: happened to her patent because it got locked away in secrecy,
Speaker 1: and she was just curious, you know, whatever happened to
Speaker 1: that idea. I came up with her friend did some
Speaker 1: digging and discovered that the technology she and Antile had
Speaker 1: proposed in ninety one was now in common use in
Speaker 1: the United States military for secret communications. Her patent at
Speaker 1: that point had expired. So patents provide protection, but only
Speaker 1: for a set number of years. So if you have
Speaker 1: an invention and you patent it for the amount of
Speaker 1: time that the patent is active, you have protection. If
Speaker 1: someone else uses your invention, creates something that relies upon
Speaker 1: your invention without first licensing that from you, without you
Speaker 1: giving them permission to do it, you can, uh you
Speaker 1: can pursue a legal case against them and say that
Speaker 1: they've infringed upon your patented idea or your patented invention,
Speaker 1: I should say, and if the court finds it is so,
Speaker 1: you could be awarded money for that. However, patents only
Speaker 1: are good for a certain number of years, and after
Speaker 1: that they passed into the public domain, which is meant
Speaker 1: to give inventors the opportunity to take advantage of previous
Speaker 1: inventions and then improve upon them. Otherwise, you would lock
Speaker 1: an ideal way and it would become the exclusive domain
Speaker 1: of a single party, and that would squelch innovation. Well,
Speaker 1: Lamar's patent had entered into the public domain by nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. However, as it turns out, the military had
Speaker 1: been using that patented idea since before the patent had
Speaker 1: actually expired, and that meant that Lamar should have been
Speaker 1: paid for the use of that idea. As those who
Speaker 1: submitted their inventions to the Inventor's Counsel I mentioned them
Speaker 1: in the last episode, they were supposed to receive compensation
Speaker 1: if those inventions were actually put into practice. Lamar was
Speaker 1: unaware of the fact that they had been doing this
Speaker 1: by the time she found out her patent had expired,
Speaker 1: and she did not know that if she were to
Speaker 1: sue within six years of the patent expiring for revenue
Speaker 1: that should have been hers, she could have won the
Speaker 1: court case. She was unaware of all of that, and
Speaker 1: as a result, she did not receive any money from
Speaker 1: her patented idea that the United States government was actively
Speaker 1: exploiting from the nineteen fifties onward. The implementation in uh
Speaker 1: in question the one that was first used back when
Speaker 1: her patented idea was still patented, was called the Sanna
Speaker 1: buoy or Sanna boy as most people pronounce it, But
Speaker 1: it's a a portmanteau of sonar and buoy or boy
Speaker 1: I say, booie. That's just the way I've always said
Speaker 1: that word. But you know, thing thing what floats in
Speaker 1: the water SnO. Sano buoys have been around for a while,
Speaker 1: but this particular implementation used Lamar's proposal of frequency hopping,
Speaker 1: and it would allow a buoy in the water to
Speaker 1: send sonar signals out in an attempt to detect in
Speaker 1: submarines in the area and send those communications up to
Speaker 1: an airplane that's flying surveillance overhead. So you would actually
Speaker 1: deploy several of these Sauna buys in an area, and
Speaker 1: you would use any signals they were picking up to
Speaker 1: triangulate the position of an submarine and be able to
Speaker 1: locate them and then track them. So, in order to
Speaker 1: do that effectively, you want that communication to be secret
Speaker 1: and you want you want to avoid the potential of
Speaker 1: whoever you're trying to spy on be able to jam
Speaker 1: the signals, so you need some way of preventing that.
Speaker 1: Frequency hopping was the way her patent had passed to
Speaker 1: a contractor who was working on the Sauna Buy. His
Speaker 1: name was rummeld Ireneus Sabor Machaki, and I know I've
Speaker 1: butcher trying to pronounce that name. It was a heck
Speaker 1: of a name to try and pronounce. He said that
Speaker 1: when he was handed the patent the names had been expunged.
Speaker 1: He didn't know who was respond stable for it. It
Speaker 1: was just property of the United States Navy. But he
Speaker 1: used it as a basis for his design of a
Speaker 1: frequency hopping communication system between the Sauna Buy and airplanes,
Speaker 1: though his version used a computer chip to determine which
Speaker 1: frequencies the two elements would use in sequence rather than
Speaker 1: rolls of piano paper, so they upgraded the means of
Speaker 1: sending the series of frequencies, but it was still the
Speaker 1: same idea. Years later he discovered who had written the patent,
Speaker 1: and he created a page on his personal website that
Speaker 1: he titled a Tribute to Hetty Lamar. He detailed how
Speaker 1: the frequency hopping technology was used not just in Saanna
Speaker 1: Buy's but also early surveillance drones developed by the Aerojet
Speaker 1: General Corporation and which eventually were used in Vietnam. In
Speaker 1: his piece, he thanked heavy Lamar for contributions, and as
Speaker 1: the years went by, Lamar hit many obstacles. She would
Speaker 1: be married several times, but the marriages would never last
Speaker 1: very long. She had two children of her own and
Speaker 1: adopted another, though her adopted son would essentially be raised
Speaker 1: by another family. She would be taken under the care
Speaker 1: of a doctor named Max Jacobsen, sometimes referred to as
Speaker 1: doctor field Good, who got her hooked on amphetamines. His
Speaker 1: medical license would ultimately be revoked by the New York
Speaker 1: State Board of Regents in nineteen seventy five, and Hey
Speaker 1: Lamar would become a recluse. She had multiple plastic surgeries,
Speaker 1: some of which did not go well, which made her
Speaker 1: withdraw even further. She was ashamed of her appearance, and
Speaker 1: when she was contacted in nineteen seven and told that
Speaker 1: lockeed Martin and the military plan to honor her with
Speaker 1: an award for her contributions for her creation of frequency hopping,
Speaker 1: her response was, well, it's about time. She did not
Speaker 1: attend the ceremony herself. She was self conscious about how
Speaker 1: she looked, but her son accepted the award for her,
Speaker 1: and she called him right in the middle of the
Speaker 1: acceptance speech, to the great amusement of both her son
Speaker 1: and the crowd. Old Hetty Lamar died in two thousand,
Speaker 1: at the age of eighty five, and by then her
Speaker 1: story had been told a few times, but her name
Speaker 1: and performances had often been used as punchlines. Ultimately, I'm
Speaker 1: very sad for Hetty Lamar, as I feel her contributions
Speaker 1: were criminally underappreciated and unrewarded and unacknowledged, and the things
Speaker 1: that she was most known for were things that she
Speaker 1: ultimately thought were not very important, playing these roles that
Speaker 1: the studio kept pushing on her, not the parts that
Speaker 1: she wanted, nor her intellectual contributions. Those were left in
Speaker 1: complete ignorance among most people, and I find that really tragic. However,
Speaker 1: when we come back, I'm going to talk more about
Speaker 1: frequency hopping and how it's an underlying technology for a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff we use today. But first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. So the
Speaker 1: concept behind frequency hopping is simple. You have two or
Speaker 1: more radios tuned to a frequency which allows for communication
Speaker 1: between those two radios, and in synchronized moments, you switch
Speaker 1: the transmitting and receiving frequencies to a different frequency but
Speaker 1: different from the one they had been using, but the
Speaker 1: same as each other, So they both simultaneously switched to
Speaker 1: a new frequency, the same new frequency. Doing this prevents
Speaker 1: someone else from easily being able to snoop on you,
Speaker 1: or to jam your conversation, or just to encounter interference
Speaker 1: in general, because you're never on any one frequency for
Speaker 1: two terribly long. So imagine you're listening to a song
Speaker 1: on the radio, and a minute into the song, your
Speaker 1: radio switches spontaneously to a different station, but the same
Speaker 1: song is on there, and it's playing in the exact
Speaker 1: same spot, And you find out that your radio and
Speaker 1: the transmitter are synchronized, and that if you had stuck
Speaker 1: to your original station, you'd only hear part of the
Speaker 1: song before the signal just went away and you were
Speaker 1: listening to nothing at all. That's the basic idea. It's
Speaker 1: simple in concept, but how do you implement it so
Speaker 1: that it actually works. Both the transmitter and the receiver
Speaker 1: rely upon a pseudo random sequence to determine the series
Speaker 1: of frequencies that are to be used throughout the communication,
Speaker 1: and pseudo random kind of means what it sounds like
Speaker 1: it's a process that on casual glance looks like it's random,
Speaker 1: but in reality it isn't. I've talked about this in
Speaker 1: previous episodes of tech Stuff. Computers can create things that
Speaker 1: appear to be random because they actually go through a
Speaker 1: very complicated system in order to get a specific product.
Speaker 1: But if you were to understand all the steps, you
Speaker 1: would see that it's not truly a random number because
Speaker 1: computers are not good at creating true random numbers. They
Speaker 1: can just simulate random most of the time anyway, So
Speaker 1: you tend to use a very complicated process, but it's
Speaker 1: entirely deterministic. So that does mean that if you knew
Speaker 1: every single step of the process, and you had enough
Speaker 1: time and enough smarts, you could get to the answer
Speaker 1: that the computer is using. In fact, if you're good
Speaker 1: enough and you're fast enough, you could do it to
Speaker 1: the point where you could predict what the next thing
Speaker 1: is going to be, and you could actually in advance
Speaker 1: tune to the correct frequency every single time if you
Speaker 1: had all the information that the system was using in
Speaker 1: order to generate this stuff. But again, if you were
Speaker 1: just to look at it, it would appear to be
Speaker 1: totally random because it's such a complicated system that's going
Speaker 1: through before it gets to that that solution, and the
Speaker 1: processes tend to be really super fast, like changing frequencies
Speaker 1: at least twice a second, and that's a slow one.
Speaker 1: Most of them change frequencies way more frequently than two
Speaker 1: times in a second, which means it's way too fast
Speaker 1: for a human to be able to replicate any a Typically,
Speaker 1: the way this might work is you would have two
Speaker 1: radio transmitters and receivers or radios, let's just say, and
Speaker 1: you want them both on the same series of frequencies.
Speaker 1: So you you make some sort of process that generates
Speaker 1: what appears to be a random number, and that this
Speaker 1: number is somehow associated with frequencies, typically in a look
Speaker 1: up table. So you could say, like, if the number
Speaker 1: is fourteen, you look at this table, this chart, and
Speaker 1: it tells you what sequence of frequencies you need to
Speaker 1: use for that communications session. So your first radio will
Speaker 1: send a request to radio number two. Radio number two
Speaker 1: responds with a seed number generated by this pseudo random process.
Speaker 1: So Radio one says, hey, I want to chat. Radio
Speaker 1: two says, use this number. Radio one ends up using
Speaker 1: that number and looks up the series of frequencies, sends
Speaker 1: that back to radio two for a confirmation. Uh, the
Speaker 1: these are the sequence of frequencies that the two radios
Speaker 1: are going to use for the duration of their communication session,
Speaker 1: and then the radio two will confirm that by sending
Speaker 1: a synchronization signal to radio one that makes both radio
Speaker 1: start on the same moment and then they can communicate.
Speaker 1: They will swap frequencies, not just knowing which frequency it
Speaker 1: goes next, but how long each frequency will be landed upon, right,
Speaker 1: how long do you spend on each individual frequency? And
Speaker 1: that allows for the communication between these two devices where
Speaker 1: you're you're hopping from one frequency to the next throughout
Speaker 1: the entire session. And once you do that, you would
Speaker 1: appear to be hopping too frequencies at random from the
Speaker 1: perspective and of an outside observer. So if you and
Speaker 1: your buddy are chatting with each other over cellular phones
Speaker 1: that are using frequency hopping spread spectrum approach, then I
Speaker 1: when I'm looking at the signals that are you're sending
Speaker 1: back and forth to me, it would look like it's
Speaker 1: totally random, like there's no meaning from one frequency to
Speaker 1: the next. You're not sequentially hopping frequencies, you're jumping all
Speaker 1: over within that that bandwidth, whatever that band of frequencies
Speaker 1: happens to be. You could be jumping left and right,
Speaker 1: you know, up and down all sorts of ways, and
Speaker 1: I would not be able to determine where you're going
Speaker 1: to go next. That's really important for a multiple reasons,
Speaker 1: not just the idea of not being snooped upon, that's
Speaker 1: a big one, but also avoiding interference. Uh, you can
Speaker 1: have multiple devices all communicating through the same methodology, and
Speaker 1: because they're all using different frequencies and hopping around a lot,
Speaker 1: then the odds of two communication devices needing to use
Speaker 1: the exact same frequency at the exact same time are
Speaker 1: very very low. Also, these devices tend to be very
Speaker 1: low power devices, and because of that, they have a
Speaker 1: limited range. So once you get outside of that range,
Speaker 1: you don't really have to worry about interference anymore. So
Speaker 1: two mobile phones that happened to hop on the same frequency,
Speaker 1: that's only gonna be an issue if they were really
Speaker 1: close together, otherwise the signals won't propagate far enough. And
Speaker 1: again these happen. It happened so fast, within a split second,
Speaker 1: the odds of it actually causing any real interference are
Speaker 1: extremely low, and any interference that's perceptible to human beings
Speaker 1: that's almost impossible. So it you want to make sure
Speaker 1: that you have this this methodology set up in your
Speaker 1: system in a way that appears to be pseudo random
Speaker 1: to make sure you keep it secure and to keep
Speaker 1: it from interfering with all the other systems that are
Speaker 1: out there. Uh. One nice thing about this is that
Speaker 1: again you can use those multiple devices in that same
Speaker 1: frequency channel, and typically there are enough subchannels to allow
Speaker 1: lots of multiple devices to access the system without any
Speaker 1: sort of cross talk or interference. So WiFi uses this.
Speaker 1: For example, when I did the WiFi episode, I talked
Speaker 1: briefly about the strategy called frequency hopping spread spectrum or
Speaker 1: f h s S. A spread spectrum is a method
Speaker 1: in which a signal is spread throughout the frequency domain
Speaker 1: of a bandwidth. So let's just say, for argument's sake,
Speaker 1: we've got a bandwidth of channels. There are ten essential
Speaker 1: essentially sub channels inside this bandwidth, so you can think
Speaker 1: of it as a highway that has ten lanes of
Speaker 1: potential traffic. A spread spectrum would take a signal that
Speaker 1: normally would fit into just a single channel or a
Speaker 1: single lane on this highway, and then allow that signal
Speaker 1: to spread through the entire width of that bandwidth or
Speaker 1: all of the lanes of the highway. With frequency hopping,
Speaker 1: it would be as if the car was magically jumping
Speaker 1: from say, lane to to lane seven, and then from
Speaker 1: lane seven to lane five, and then lane five to
Speaker 1: lane one, and so on and so forth, just immediately
Speaker 1: jumping from one lane to the next while continuously traveling
Speaker 1: down the highway. But there are other methodologies that take
Speaker 1: a slightly different approach. Direct sequence spread spectrum, which is
Speaker 1: also used in WiFi, takes the signal and then modulates
Speaker 1: it with a pseudo random noise spreading code, and the
Speaker 1: result is that tiny bits of data travel through different
Speaker 1: frequency subchannels. So with frequency hopping, you have this big
Speaker 1: highway with ten lanes, and the car is in any
Speaker 1: one lane at any given time, but just one lane, right,
Speaker 1: It's like either in lane two, or it's in lane
Speaker 1: three or whatever. And then when it comes time to hop,
Speaker 1: it suddenly appears in a different lane, but it's always
Speaker 1: only in one lane at a time. Direct sequence spread
Speaker 1: spectrum is different. It's in all the lanes simultaneously, but
Speaker 1: only tiny parts of it are in each lane, and
Speaker 1: then on the other end you're able to piece it
Speaker 1: all together. So different approach to using the same sort
Speaker 1: of trying to solve the same sort of problem. So
Speaker 1: it's the basis d S S S. The direct sequence
Speaker 1: spread spectrum is the basis of c d M A
Speaker 1: mobile phone technology, and then the frequency hopping spread spectrum
Speaker 1: is the underlying technology for G s M mobile phones.
Speaker 1: Most of the world used g s M for mobile
Speaker 1: phone technology, at least before the development of lte A
Speaker 1: T and t n T Mobile were the two companies
Speaker 1: in the United States that relied on g s M tech,
Speaker 1: and then c d M A was only used in
Speaker 1: a couple of places in the world, primarily the United
Speaker 1: States under Verizon and Sprint. In WiFi, the typical approach
Speaker 1: with f H S S was to use one of
Speaker 1: seventy nine different one mega hurts channels following one of
Speaker 1: seventy eight different hops sequences, and the sequence would require
Speaker 1: hops every four hundred milliseconds. The odds of interference, whether
Speaker 1: intentional or otherwise, we're really low. To reduce the chance
Speaker 1: of interference even more, like I said, these technologies were
Speaker 1: using very low power transmissions, uh typically around one what
Speaker 1: or less in power. And you may remember in that
Speaker 1: recent episode about WiFi how the spectrum set aside for
Speaker 1: WiFi communication happened to be within the range of industrial
Speaker 1: and medical equipment and also stuff like microwave ovens. So
Speaker 1: in the United States, the FCC had said, this band
Speaker 1: of frequencies is set aside for these particular types of technologies. However,
Speaker 1: if your technology can transmit at a power level below
Speaker 1: one what or so, then you may also make use
Speaker 1: of this and unlicensed approaches to this this band of frequencies.
Speaker 1: That's where WiFi rose up out of the unlicensed use
Speaker 1: as long as they remained in the transmission power below
Speaker 1: the threshold. So that also meant that the potential of
Speaker 1: interference was decreased because again those signals could not try
Speaker 1: will very far, they just didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: behind them. H f HSS has been used in multiple
Speaker 1: types of technologies, from cell phones to WiFi to bluetooth technology,
Speaker 1: and the bluetooth implementation is actually called adaptive frequency hopping
Speaker 1: spread spectrum or a f H Bluetooth signals change frequencies
Speaker 1: one thousand six hundred times a second across seventy nine
Speaker 1: possible subchannels. And it's called adaptive because Bluetooth can detect
Speaker 1: which frequencies are the most crowded and avoid those using
Speaker 1: less crowded frequencies to help head off potential interference problems. Now,
Speaker 1: some investimated that the value of this technology comes close
Speaker 1: to thirty billion dollars or more, and Lamar never really
Speaker 1: got to see any of that. During her lifetime. She
Speaker 1: made money in other ways, but didn't really get to
Speaker 1: profit off this idea, which again seems to be a shame. Now,
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're gonna talk about some other
Speaker 1: more interesting, not more in interesting, but additional interesting inventions
Speaker 1: that came to us from celebrities. But first let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break to thank our sponsor. Well, I've pretty
Speaker 1: much exhausted the topic of frequency hopping without getting into
Speaker 1: much more technical detail, and that would increase both the
Speaker 1: likelihood that I would lose a lot of listeners and
Speaker 1: more likely I would get something really really wrong, because
Speaker 1: my own understanding of the technology does not go that deep.
Speaker 1: So instead of trying to talk about it for another
Speaker 1: ten minutes and him and Hall, which I think would
Speaker 1: waste everyone's time. I thought it might be fun to
Speaker 1: chat about other actors and other people in the entertainment
Speaker 1: industry who have been credited with various inventions and what
Speaker 1: those inventions are. For example, actor and musician Harry Connick Jr.
Speaker 1: Invented a system that synchronized the display of digital sheet
Speaker 1: music from musicians in an orchestra, so instead of musicians
Speaker 1: all referencing printed sheet music on paper, which requires you
Speaker 1: to find time to turn a page and try to
Speaker 1: keep up with the pace of the musical piece. Harry
Speaker 1: Connick Jr. Gets a credit on US patent six million,
Speaker 1: three forty eight thousand, six hundred forty eight for a
Speaker 1: music display that keeps time with the playing of a
Speaker 1: piece and updates automatically. You file for the patent in
Speaker 1: nineteen and received a patent on February nine, two thousand two.
Speaker 1: The abstract reads like this quote, a system and method
Speaker 1: for coordinated music composition and display among musicians is presented.
Speaker 1: The system and method enables a conductor, composer, or band
Speaker 1: leader to interactively edit one or more music score parts
Speaker 1: of a composition using a pen based interface, mouse, alpha
Speaker 1: numeric keyboard, or a musical keyboard. Handwritten music editing which
Speaker 1: is entered with the pen based interface may be flexibly
Speaker 1: converted to a digital all music notation format. Connected to
Speaker 1: the composer station are one or more musician stations that
Speaker 1: may be arranged as an orchestra. The musical score parts
Speaker 1: may be selectively transmitted to one or more musician stations
Speaker 1: by the composer. Thus, an operator of the conductor station
Speaker 1: can flexibly write and edit music score parts and transmit
Speaker 1: the parts to musicians over the network. The system and
Speaker 1: method can also be used to conduct the orchestra in
Speaker 1: rehearsals or performances, so this could be incredibly useful if
Speaker 1: you were composing a piece of music. Let's say that
Speaker 1: you're a film composer and you're working on trying to
Speaker 1: create just the right mood during the actual composition. You've
Speaker 1: got the film to watch, You've got a print of
Speaker 1: the film, there's no music on it yet, and you
Speaker 1: decide to try a composition you've created, and the orchestra
Speaker 1: plays it just as you wrote it, and you realize
Speaker 1: this isn't actually evoking the emotion I want. I need
Speaker 1: to change this up a little bit. With this system,
Speaker 1: you can make those sort of notes live and have
Speaker 1: it distributed immediately to musicians who could then read those
Speaker 1: changes and incorporate that in their next performance of the piece.
Speaker 1: I think about this when I hear episodes of the
Speaker 1: soundtrack show, because they talk a lot about having to
Speaker 1: do different takes and having different approaches to playing the
Speaker 1: same sort of music over and over again. And I
Speaker 1: think it's a pretty clever approach and also makes sense.
Speaker 1: He is a musician. He created a system that would
Speaker 1: benefit musicians. But what about magician Harry Houdini. He patented
Speaker 1: a diver's suit in nineteen twenty one. Specifically, Whodini's design
Speaker 1: was to improve upon deep sea diving suits. So this
Speaker 1: is one of those big bulky ones as the big
Speaker 1: like BioShock style helmet on the top of it. The
Speaker 1: design was meant to be an improvement in several ways
Speaker 1: upon the diving suits of the day. For example, is
Speaker 1: meant to protect divers from the intense pressure they would
Speaker 1: experience when diving deep below the surface. It was also
Speaker 1: meant to allow divers to quickly move up or down
Speaker 1: within the sea without having to spend as much time
Speaker 1: compressing or decompressing, And it was meant to allow divers
Speaker 1: to get in and out of the suit all by themselves,
Speaker 1: including in the case of an emergency in which a
Speaker 1: diver might need to ditch the suit underwater and risk
Speaker 1: getting the bends in an effort to avoid certain death.
Speaker 1: The diving suit consisted of an upper body section and
Speaker 1: a lower body section, and they would join together at
Speaker 1: a metallic belt at a lever operator system on it,
Speaker 1: which would allow the diver to attach or detach the
Speaker 1: two sections. So you flip a little lever and the
Speaker 1: suit would come apart. Pretty clever invention and also makes sense.
Speaker 1: Harry Hudini was all about finding ways to get out
Speaker 1: of things very quickly. He was mostly known as an
Speaker 1: escape artist kind of magician, more of an escape artist
Speaker 1: than your your traditional magician. I would say. Then we
Speaker 1: have Samuel Clemens, who was better known, of course as
Speaker 1: Mark Twain. He got a patent for an invention titled
Speaker 1: Quote Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments end Quote,
Speaker 1: which was essentially an elastic strap and clasp, with at
Speaker 1: least one image in the patent showing a hook and
Speaker 1: clasp system. So in other words, Mark Twain, writer of
Speaker 1: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn invented the bra strap clasp.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Mark Twain, we appreciate your support. Zeppo Marks,
Speaker 1: the younger brother to the famous Marx brothers of Groucho,
Speaker 1: Chico and Harpo. Not to mention Gummo, who most people
Speaker 1: don't remember. He wasn't just an actor in some of
Speaker 1: their earlier films. He was also an inventor. He created
Speaker 1: a cardiac pulse monitor, plus a couple of other inventions,
Speaker 1: including a heating pad that used steam as the source
Speaker 1: for heat. The cardiac monitor was in the form of
Speaker 1: a watch. And I gotta quote the abstract because I
Speaker 1: like the idea, but I'm not sure how practical it
Speaker 1: really is, whether or not it actually worked. But here's
Speaker 1: there's the abstract quote. A unit to provide an audible
Speaker 1: and vibratory warning to advise persons who have cardiac impairment
Speaker 1: of extreme variations in the pulse rate. The unit is
Speaker 1: provided with an electric motor that is operated by the
Speaker 1: power of a small electric cell in a circuit that
Speaker 1: is intermittently closed by a pulse actuated switch and which
Speaker 1: rotates a permanent magnet. The latter is enclosed in a
Speaker 1: housing that is held in a position corresponding to normal
Speaker 1: by a hair spring, said housing under drag of the
Speaker 1: magnetic field of the magnet being moved rotationally in the
Speaker 1: direction of magnet rotation when the pulse rate is above
Speaker 1: normal due to a more continuous energizing of the motor
Speaker 1: by the pulse, and said housing under bias of the
Speaker 1: hair spring being moved rotationally counter to said magnetic drag.
Speaker 1: When the pulse rate is subnormal, a color coded tail
Speaker 1: tale advises of lesser pulse rate variations in either direction,
Speaker 1: and audible alarm is provided to warn of excessively high
Speaker 1: or abnormally low changes of the pulse rate. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, what all that wordiness says is that there
Speaker 1: was an element inside this watch that would rotate as
Speaker 1: part of its normal means of operation if it wasn't
Speaker 1: attached to your risk at all. Once attached to your wrist,
Speaker 1: their pulse would create a a switch. There would be
Speaker 1: a switch that would open and close in time with
Speaker 1: your pulse. Their pulse would somehow activate this switch. This
Speaker 1: is the part where I'm not sure how this would work.
Speaker 1: How you would have a switch that was sensitive enough
Speaker 1: to activate whenever your pulse was beating through whenever it
Speaker 1: was pressing against the switch, and whenever the switch is activated,
Speaker 1: the permanent magnet inside this device would want to turn
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction that it would normally turn in.
Speaker 1: And if your pulse was regular, then these uh counter
Speaker 1: active forces. The natural role rotation of the permanent magnet
Speaker 1: due to the inner workings of the watch versus the
Speaker 1: actions that were being created because of your pulse closing
Speaker 1: off this switch would sort of cancel each other out.
Speaker 1: But if your pulse was too slow, then it would
Speaker 1: be rotating too much in the way that it was
Speaker 1: naturally intended to go, or if your pulse was too fast,
Speaker 1: it would be rotating counter to that direction, and in
Speaker 1: either case it would alert you saying, hey, your heart's
Speaker 1: going all crazy, like maybe you need to take a rest.
Speaker 1: I honestly don't know if this thing would work based
Speaker 1: upon the patent it. I didn't learn enough of it
Speaker 1: to figure out how you could have a switch that's
Speaker 1: sensitive without using something like h L e ed s
Speaker 1: to detect when blood is flowing through your veins. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of options for other inventions created
Speaker 1: by celebrities to kind of close this out. Steven Spielberg
Speaker 1: invented a device that would allow you to make annotations
Speaker 1: and edits to a document using your voice. Um typically
Speaker 1: just a like a digital recorder that would allow you
Speaker 1: to annotate a digital recording of a screenplay. He meant
Speaker 1: to do this so that you can make edits on
Speaker 1: the on the go, because he said, often you wanted
Speaker 1: to speak out your thoughts, but it was hard to
Speaker 1: capture what those ideas were in documented form, and this
Speaker 1: would be a way that you could collect that information
Speaker 1: and append it to an existing document. Michael Jackson's name
Speaker 1: is on a patent for shoes that shifts the wearer's
Speaker 1: center of gravity, allowing the wearer to lean much further
Speaker 1: forward than they normally could and still maintain your balance.
Speaker 1: This was to replicate the effect as seen in the
Speaker 1: music video Smooth Criminal Now. During the music video, the
Speaker 1: dancers actually wore special harnesses hooked up to cables, and
Speaker 1: that gave them the ability to lean far forward, you know,
Speaker 1: without face planting. But that would not be such a
Speaker 1: good idea during a live show. It would require too
Speaker 1: much set up, it would be too obvious to the audience,
Speaker 1: so they needed some other warm of invention to allow
Speaker 1: for that same sort of effect. So these shoes included
Speaker 1: a way to lock into an upstanding post positioned on
Speaker 1: a stage, sort of like a peg the shoe would
Speaker 1: fit on. This actually makes me think of action figures.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of action figures that in the
Speaker 1: heel of a shoe on the action figure, there's a
Speaker 1: little hole, and that typically will correspond with pegs that
Speaker 1: you'll find in various action figure play sets, so that
Speaker 1: the figure will stand up and not just fall over
Speaker 1: as soon as you try and position him or her
Speaker 1: in whatever placing you're using. But there was one invention
Speaker 1: so goofy from someone pretty famous that I felt it
Speaker 1: had to be my final example because it's just about
Speaker 1: as much of the opposite of what Hetty Lamar did
Speaker 1: as I can imagine. The inventor in question was Francis
Speaker 1: Ford Coppola, and Coppola is a famous film director and
Speaker 1: screenwriter and producer. He co wrote the film Patent, he
Speaker 1: co wrote and directed The Godfather, and he directed apocalyp Now,
Speaker 1: among other things, so he's definitely made a name for
Speaker 1: himself in the history of film. He also has a
Speaker 1: connection with Michael Jackson. I just mentioned Michael Jackson, well
Speaker 1: Topola had a connection with him. He directed Captain e O,
Speaker 1: which is a three D seventeen minute short film that
Speaker 1: starred Michael Jackson in sort of a space fantasy adventure
Speaker 1: and this was for Disney theme parks. But he also
Speaker 1: filed a patent application on August thirty one, two thousand six,
Speaker 1: and the patent application had the title Garment for identifying
Speaker 1: location on body of the garment wearer. The abstract is
Speaker 1: short quote the present invention discloses a garment having printed
Speaker 1: thereon a figure comprising uniquely identifiable regions that when Warren
Speaker 1: permit the wearer to identify for a third party a
Speaker 1: particular location on the wearer's body end quote. The patent
Speaker 1: includes an image of a shirt with a turtle shell
Speaker 1: on it. The turtle's shell has a grid pattern printed
Speaker 1: over it, and the grids have numbers inside of them,
Speaker 1: so you can refer to specific numbers within the grid.
Speaker 1: And the whole purpose of this is to let someone
Speaker 1: else know when you have an itch in an effort
Speaker 1: to get that itch scratched. Seriously, this is straight from
Speaker 1: the patent application. I swear I did not make this up.
Speaker 1: Quote for example, scratching an itch is a very common
Speaker 1: task in everyday life. It can be especially difficult, however,
Speaker 1: for a person to scratch his or her own itch
Speaker 1: when the location of the itch isn't a hard to
Speaker 1: reach spot, such as the back presently absent a device
Speaker 1: such as a scratching stick. A person with an itch
Speaker 1: in a hard to reach location must ask a second
Speaker 1: party to scratch the itch. This, in turn requires orienting
Speaker 1: the second party scratcher by using a series of directions
Speaker 1: which are often being misunderstood by the second party. For example,
Speaker 1: these instructions might include, could you scratch lower to the left? No,
Speaker 1: the other left? Now down lower to the right, no,
Speaker 1: no too far back to the left. This situation may
Speaker 1: arise for people in normal health and dexterity, or for
Speaker 1: people with limited flexibility, such as those having spinal injuries
Speaker 1: that prevent them from bending or twisting to any significant degree.
Speaker 1: So a solution was to have a print out of
Speaker 1: a turtle shell with numbers on it, and then you
Speaker 1: would just say can you scratch me at number seventeen. Then,
Speaker 1: because you have the shirt on with the numbers on
Speaker 1: the back, the person could reach up look at number seventeen,
Speaker 1: give you a good old scratching and you would finally
Speaker 1: have relief. The patent office did not appear to issue
Speaker 1: a patent for this particular idea, and again I think
Speaker 1: of it as being a an incredible contrast with what
Speaker 1: Heavy Lamar's patent was back in So I had to
Speaker 1: include that as our final example because it makes me
Speaker 1: smile so much. Guys. Before I sign off, I just
Speaker 1: want to give another shout out to the documentary Bombshell.
Speaker 1: It's all about Heavy lamar story, not just the parts
Speaker 1: about her UH kind of coming up with the idea
Speaker 1: of frequency hopping, but also other elements of her life,
Speaker 1: including the trials and tribulations she went through, the various
Speaker 1: UH challenges she faced throughout her life, choices she made,
Speaker 1: and how that affected her. I highly recommend it. If
Speaker 1: you have the opportunity to watch it, go check it out.
Speaker 1: I happen to watch it on Amazon Prime, but wherever
Speaker 1: you might find it, uh, I think it's worth a watch.
Speaker 1: So that's a thumbs up for me. Well, that wraps
Speaker 1: up this discussion about Henty Lamar and frequency hopping and
Speaker 1: celebrity inventions. I'm sure I will someday revisit celebrity inventions.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of others out there that are
Speaker 1: kind of interesting, some of which aren't necessarily zany, but
Speaker 1: are genuinely interesting and useful. Uh, some of which are
Speaker 1: more in that zany category. So maybe I'll do an
Speaker 1: episode about that again in the future. If you have
Speaker 1: a suggestion for an episode of tech Stuff, maybe you've
Speaker 1: got a company or technology or person in tech I
Speaker 1: should cover. Send me a message. The email address is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle at
Speaker 1: both of those is tech Stuff h s W. Remember
Speaker 1: to follow us on Instagram and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.