Hedy Lamarr wasn't just a beautiful movie star. According to a new play, Frequency Hopping, she was also a shrewd inventor who devised a signal technology that millions of people use every day.
Lamarr—born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Austria in 1914—developed a passion for helping the U.S. military after walking away from an unhappy marriage to an Austrian Fascist weapons manufacturer in 1937. In an attempt to stall her acting career, he had brought her to his business meetings, where she found herself continuously listening to "fat bastards argue antiaircraft this, vacuum tube that," explains Lamarr's character—played by Erica Newhouse—in the play, Frequency Hopping. In the meetings, they had talked about developing detection devices to listen to, and jam, the radio signals that American aircraft and weapons used to communicate with one another; and Lamarr wanted to foil their plans. "Can you guide your torpedo towards an enemy target—or just use radio control period—without being detected? Or jammed?" Lamarr's character asks.
Lamarr realized that by transmitting radio signals along rapidly changing, or "hopping," frequencies, American radio-guided weapons would be far more resilient to detection and jamming. The sequence of frequencies would be known by both the transmitter and receiver ahead of time, but to the German detectors their message would seem like gibberish. "No jammer could detect it, no German code-breaker could decipher a completely random code," she says in the play.
In 1940 after working on the project for several years, Lamarr called on an unlikely invention partner: avant-garde composer George Antheil, 13 years her senior. As the play—which includes a 25-piece robotic orchestra performing one of Antheil's most renowned pieces—makes clear, frequency hopping spread spectrum is based on a musical concept. The frequencies are "carried in waves through space like melodies," Lamarr's character explains.
More broadly, frequency hopping can be compared with aspects of human communication, argues the production's Brooklyn-based playwright and director Elyse Singer, whose other works include Love In The Void (alt.fan.c-love), a play about Courtney Love's Internet postings. Just as the frequencies "hop" to avoid detection, "we send secret codes to each other, shift and hop and avoid, especially in romantic relationships," Singer says. The play explores this theme in the tumultuous relationship that develops between Lamarr and Antheil.
The pair succeeded in patenting their technology, and presented the concept to the National Inventors Council in 1940, but their invention—which used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies—was not well received. "The U.S. Navy said, 'Thank you very much for the patent, Miss Lamarr—we won't be needing your services here in Washington,'" Lamarr's character laments onstage.
The technology, says Singer, was far ahead of its time. Although her ideas were at first ignored, the technology (which she and Antheil patented in 1942) was later used by the military—during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, for example—and more recently, it has been employed in wireless technologies like cell phones. It was eventually recognized in 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation honored Lamarr with a special Pioneer Award and she became the first woman to receive the Invention Convention's BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award.
Fittingly, Frequency Hopping is itself a highly technological production. In addition to the 25-piece robotic orchestra developed by the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, the play uses a number of special effects. Singer wanted to portray "surrealist-inspired dreams and fantasies," such as objects popping out of bodies, so she incorporated two screens onto the set—one in front of the actors and one behind them. The front screen is transparent, so the actors can perform behind it; Singer explains that it utilizes a special invisible polymer that reflects projected or solid images so that they appear in three dimensions, like holograms.
Singer hopes that these images, which are used to suggest what the characters are thinking, will help the audience peer into their minds. "Being able to project images on two planes helps us to get into Lamarr and Antheil's mindscape, which is really where artists and scientists develop new ideas," she says.
Frequency Hopping runs until June 29 at New York City's 3LD Art & Technology Center. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased by calling 212-352-3101 or visiting www.frequencyhopping.net
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Hedy Lamarr: Not just a pretty face
Bizarre Illegal Immigration techniques
Plenty of inventive (and desperate) people have come up with a number of imaginative schemes for sneaking themselves and others across national borders.
On 2003, Illegal immigrants from India and Pakistan being smuggled from mainland China to Hong Kong were found inside suitcases).
On 2001, a 135-lb. woman was hidden behind the dashboard of a car. The "passenger" might be quite cramped and uncomfortable and the automobile difficult to maneuver after the modifications, but the ruse wouldn't have to be maintained for long — the car could be loaded just out of sight of border agents, driven the short distance to the crossing, and unloaded not far across the other side.
Similarly, another would-be border crosser was caught attempting to enter the U.S. concealed inside a seat occupied by another passenger:
When property manager Ryan Froerer got a call from a realtor to check on a townhouse, he knew something was up. "It was the sickest thing I've ever seen. Just unimaginable that someone could live in that." He couldn't even open the front door. It was blocked from inside. As he finally entered the house, he found about 70,000 empty beer cans.
Inside, he took just a few snapshots to document the scene. Beer cans by the tens of thousands. Mountains of cans burying the furniture. Froerer e-mailed his photos to a couple of friends, who sent them to friends, and so the news spread through the internet.
The water and heat were shut off, apparently on purpose by the tenant, who evidently drank Coors Light beer exclusively for the eight years he lived there. "It's just unbelievable that a human being could live like that", said Froerer.
To all outward appearances, the person who lived in the townhouse was the perfect tenant. He always paid on time and he never complained. He kept a low profile in the neighborhood. The cans were finally recycled for 800 dollars, an estimated 70,000 cans: 24 beers a day for 8 years.
Monday, June 2, 2008
You can have an erection once dead
A death erection (sometimes referred to as "angel lust") is a post-mortem erection which occurs when a male individual dies vertically or face-down – the cadaver remaining in this position. During life, the pumping of blood by the heart ensures a relatively even distribution around the blood vessels of the human body. Once this mechanism has ended, only the force of gravity acts upon the blood. As with any mass, the blood settles at the lowest point of the body and causes edema or swelling to occur; the discoloration caused by this is called lividity.
It's true, Men can breastfeed
The phenomenon of male lactation in humans has become more common in recent years due to the use of medications that stimulate a human male's mammary glands.
Male lactation is most commonly caused by hormonal treatments given to men suffering from prostate cancer. It is also possible for males (and females) to induce lactation through constant massage and simulated 'sucking' of the nipple over a long period of time (months).
You can die on the Toilet
There are many toilet-related injuries and some toilet-related deaths throughout history and in urban legends.
In young boys, one of the most common causes of genital injury is when the toilet seat falls down while using the toilet.
George II of Great Britain died on the toilet on 25 October 1760 from an aortic dissection. According to Horace Walpole's memoirs, King George "rose as usual at six, and drank his chocolate; for all his actions were invariably methodic. A quarter after seven he went into a little closet. His German valet de chambre in waiting heard a noise, and running in, found the King dead on the floor."
