Customer Reviews

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

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1 star:		(7)

 

 

Hedy Lamarr was a Hollywood star, considered one of the most beautiful women in the world. She was also an inventor. These two disparate sounding facts would make anyone sit up and take notice. We are fortunate that a writer of the caliber of Richard Rhodes did notice. What he gives us is a fascinating account of Lamarr and her fellow inventor, musician George Antheil, as well as a host of other topics including evocative portraits of 1920s Vienna and Paris, insightful commentary on Hollywood and World War 2 and a crystal clear account of the technical details behind Lamarr and Antheil's key invention- spread-spectrum frequency hopping, a technique which can be used for jam-proof wireless communication in everything from submarine transmission to cell phones.

As is the case with his other commanding works, Rhodes is most adept at creating sharp character portraits of the main protagonists and an evocative recreation of the times that they lived in. He also offers a characteristically lucid account of science and technology reminiscent of the accounts in his landmark "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". Wherever possible he lets the characters speak in their own voices. He starts by describing Hedy's childhood in 1920s Vienna, a city that was a mecca for the arts and a sort of dream world for the young and ambitious. Acting was in Hedy's blood and with the encouragement of a doting father, she never looked back. After starring in a variety of roles, some scandalous for the times, she had the misfortune to marry a charming but opportunistic arms dealer who was cozy with fascists and Nazis and who turned Hedy into a trophy wife trapped in a golden cage. Endowed with an exceptionally keen mind and remarkable powers of observation, she soaked up discussions of weapons systems and armaments while attending lavish parties thrown by her husband. Even as she was expected to sit still and smile, she would carefully listen to descriptions of advances in military hardware from experts like the rocket and submarine pioneer Hellmuth Walter.

Tired of the growing brutality in Germany and trapped in an unhappy marriage, Lamarr fled to Paris, London and then to the United States where she was swept up right away by a Hollywood which was then eagerly showcasing immigrant European actors. Lamarr acted in a string of successful Hollywood movies and became known for her beauty, but the most consequential event in her life was her meeting with her California neighbor George Antheil, an avant garde musician who had spent the 1920s socializing with American expatriates in Paris and musicians like Igor Stravinsky. Like Lamarr, Antheil had an exceptional technical bent which he exploited in arranging complex combinations of player pianos and other musical instruments - an early analog version of orchestration and automated control. His "Ballet Mécanique" featuring a joyous panoply of diverse instruments and sounds had been a sensation in Paris. Apparently Lamarr first met Antheil for advice on breast augmentation since Antheil had written a few articles on the topic. But when she learnt about his background and mechanical inclination, the two struck up a close professional relationship and friendship (although Antheil was married and Rhodes find it very unlikely that they were intimate). Distressed partly by the sinking of passenger ships by German submarines and wanting to use her secretly gained knowledge of weapons systems, Lamarr had an idea for transmitting radio signals to torpedoes to guide them to their target.

In those days, wireless transmission was risky since it was based on a single frequency which the enemy could intercept. Based on her understanding of these limitations gathered from listening on conversations that her ex-husband had had with military personnel, Lamarr came up with an idea for rapidly switching transmission and reception between various frequencies, thus thwarting easy attempts at detection. Knowing about Antheil's technical bent, she took the idea to him and together they filed a key patent laying out the features of the idea in 1942. While early incarnations of the invention involved manually switching the frequency, the design soon metamorphosed into one using piano rolls (with which Antheil was intimately familiar) to semi-automatically hop between different frequencies. An ingenious addition was the inclusion of three empty channels for broadcasting "dummy" frequencies devoid of information to further confuse the enemy's jamming attempts. After final refinements, Antheil and Lamarr made a presentation to the U.S. Navy which failed to take them seriously, partly because they found it hard to believe that a Hollywood actress and an avant garde musician could come up with such a novel idea. As usual, Rhodes is excellent when explaining the scientific background of radio communication and the novelty of the Lamarr-Antheil model.

The innovative and strategically key invention languished in the shadows until it was discovered out of necessity by the Navy which was looking for a way to enable jam-proof communication between ships and aircraft. It started to be implemented in a variety of important devices and systems and was used in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Today its remnants are used in a wide variety of communications technologies, from cell phone networks to sophisticated radar systems to GPS. In 1997 the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr an award for her work. Hedy herself withdrew from public life and died in 2000; Antheil had sadly died long before in 1959 without being recognized for his contributions.

Perhaps the most revealing and saddening part of Rhodes's story is its description of how people failed to take Lamarr seriously as an inventor because she was a beautiful woman and a Hollywood actress. Lamarr herself used to say that her beauty was a curse, blinding people to any other talent she might have. In fact she was unlike most celebrities, eschewing parties and drinks and preferring quiet evenings filled with interesting conversations. Sadly, stereotypical views endure and beauty continues to be often regarded as incompatible with scientific or intellectual talents, especially among women. In a society that can value looks above everything else, Lamarr's story is a resounding counterexample and a role model for young girls that should help shatter stereotypes and reinforce the notion that disparate talents can manifest themselves in the same individual. Rhodes has picked an exceptionally interesting character to showcase this fact and he tells her story with verve, sympathy and clarity.

This book is a page-turner by any definition of the word. It arrived yesterday and I took it to the gym with me this afternoon with the intention of reading it for the hour I spend riding the exercise bike to nowhere. Two and a half hours later, I had to put it aside at the insistence of my leg muscles who made it clear that while I was enthralled with my book, my muscles had a different opinion. After dinner I read more until my eyes were too blurry to continue. This book is more interesting than fiction. In fact, the story might not be believable as fiction. Truth is definitely stranger than fact.
It's amazing that a successful Hollywood Starlet--widely considered the most beautiful woman in the world at the time and who had been married to one of the world's most successful arms dealers could combine her talent for inventing things with the similar talents of George Antheil. He was an avant-garde composer of who had lived in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, and who had moved to L.A. to compose music for the movie business, but who was also an amateur inventor.The two of them devised a system of radio control based on Antheil's production of his musical piece "Mechanisms." Working in their home workshops they devised and patented a radio controlled torpedo for the U.S. Navy. The technique remained secret for decades but their combined invention eventually resulted in today's wireless cell phones, Bluetooth networks and the various GPS systems. "Most military communications rely on Lamarr and Anthiel's breakthrough."
This is a wonderful and very uplifting true story. I don't know how any reader could fail to be mesmerized by it.

Several years ago I read about Hedy Lamar and her invention but I did not know that George Antheil was involved until I read about this book in a science magazine. I compose in my spare time and try to read anything about follow composers.

This book worked as a double biography. I was impressed that, despite the title, almost as much time was spent with the lesser known composer as with the "most beautiful woman in the world". The book followed these two separate threads until they intersected and became one - the time of invention. Towards the end there was a third thread - the technology itself and the history of frequency hopping/spread spectrum.

Despite the obvious large amount of research I felt I didn't really know the players well as I'd liked - the characterization was relatively two dimensional. There were a lot of interesting facts and eye witness accounts to fill them in, I just didn't get the full effect I have with some biographies. I may be overstating this a bit - the characters weren't totally flat, they just didn't live and breathe in my mind the way I have occasionally seen in biography.

Despite my minor gripe, the story was very interesting and I really enjoyed reading it.

Edit - I just read some other reviews - if you are looking for a celebrity bio, go someplace else. This is a book about the invention, not about Hedy the celebrity. My opinion is the title is misleading. I had read a review before I read the book and knew what I was getting into.

Everyone knows the name Hedy Lamarr; even Mel Brooks could get laughs from naming a character "Hedley Lamarr" in _Blazing Saddles_. You know Hedy Lamarr because of her screen career as a gorgeous starlet. It was only around 1997, though, that the story came out that Lamarr was an inventor, and a prophetic one. Other people read or do needlepoint for a hobby; Lamarr worked on inventions. She eventually got credit for her inventing work, and historian Richard Rhodes tells the full story in _Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World_ (Doubleday). Rhodes's brisk, delightful biography, which takes in not just Hollywood, but Vienna and avant-garde Paris, too, also dips into patent law, military inertia, and electronic innovations. Lamarr was famous for her self-deprecating advice, "Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid." This entertaining book ought to help ensure that if you think of Lamarr's glamour, you will couple it with an intellect far from stupid.

Hedwig Eva Maria Keisler was born in Vienna in 1913. Her father, a banker, enjoyed taking her on walks through the city, during which he would explain how all sorts of gadgets worked, printing presses, streetcars, and more. She halted her acting career to become the trophy wife of an arms manufacturer, and she did hear the conversations about torpedoes and other weapons systems his firm supplied. She may have practiced looking stupid during such conversations, as she absorbed the newest of technological advances. When she came to Hollywood, she met George Antheil, and _Hedy's Folly_ is his story, too. In 1925 he had premiered in Paris his _Ballet Mécanique_, a cacophonous work that required him to synchronize sixteen player pianos, along with percussion, gongs, and an airplane propeller. Antheil was delighted to find out that Lamarr was thinking about inventions, tinkering with things in a workshop within her Hollywood home. There was a problem with radio-controlled torpedoes, a jamming problem that might affect radio-controlled anything. Lamarr invented the idea of avoiding jamming by switching frequencies, what she called "frequency hopping." Antheil was the perfect partner for such an endeavor of frequency synchronization; after all, it was he who synchronized the performance of all those player pianos, and he came up with a tiny electronic gadget that would switch the frequencies. At the time, the invention came to naught. The Navy's technicians were having enough trouble making reliable one-frequency torpedoes, and were not interested in installing within them a gadget they mistakenly thought had the bulk of a player piano mechanism. The Navy did acquire the rights to the Lamarr - Antheil patent, but rejected it for any practical use, and it remained a naval secret. The patent expired in 1959 (the same year Antheil died) and had been forgotten, but it was to be resurrected for various military and civilian communication systems shortly thereafter. Nowadays, "frequency hopping" is called "spread spectrum" technology, and it is used in cell-phones, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and more. Lamarr got to see some of those applications, and knew her ideas were being put to work. She occasionally complained about the lack of recognition she had gotten for her invention. It wasn't until the 1990s that her work was brought to wider awareness, and in 1997, three years before she died, she received a Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Hedy's folly, perhaps, was thinking that the Navy would welcome the invention of a gorgeous Hollywood star. She certainly contributed to the war effort, in her more acceptable and conventional role as a celebrity promoter for war bonds. She deserved the fame she got for her beauty, to be sure, and for her ability to display it on screen. But there was more to her than looks and glamour, Rhodes shows. Hedy Lamarr played an important role in inventing the future.

I just closed the book. Wow. What a read. What a ride. I will avoid spoilers at all costs and I'm positive that many reviews will cover what I will write, but this book captured my attention from page one and I enjoyed all the way through

Having seen a TV documentary about Hedy Lamarr and her co-invention of frequency-hopping spread-spectrum with George Antheil, I was looking forward to reading Richard Rhodes' biography (I've read his brilliant books on the US nuclear weapons program). But in this case I feel cheated. Although you do get a pretty detailed account of the history of the invention itself, information about Hedy Lamarrs life is thin on the ground.

Rhodes apparently has found so little to write about her that he pads the book with an in-depth account of Antheil's life (interesting guy by all means, but not the one I paid to read about). He seems to have left behind a lot more material for a biographer to work with, so perhaps Rhodes should have written a book about him instead.

There's actually more important information about Lamarr's life in the TV documentary (repeated in the Wikipedia article) than in Rhodes' book. See the documentary or do your own web research, and save your money for a better book.

Rhodes, best known for his excellent books on the development of atomic weapons, does a creditable job of telling the formerly classified details of Hedy Lamarr's secret invention of a communications system. We learn of her childhood curiosity being encouraged by her father; her flight from Austria before the Nazis and from an overbearing husband; and her formula for looking sexy. In collaboration with an avant-garde composer co-inventor who reduced her concept to practice, she offered it to the U.S. government early in WWII. But it was not used until the 1950s, when, still classified, it was resurrected and provided to a defense contractor for a project. A true example of creative invention, Hedy's concept was far ahead of its time, but is both elegantly simple and fundamental, and is used today in many communication systems.

What a COMEBACK for Hedy. . .although never completely out of the headlines through the years, it is 54 years since Hedy starred in her last picture! And now, after two biographies in 2110, comes "Hedy's Folly. . ." by no less than than Richard Rhodes, renowned author and scholar himself. With such an authority as Mr. Rhodes, who will ever again doubt Miss Lamarr's role in the technology known as "spread-spectrum frequency hopping?" Who would ever believe that Miss Lamarr, along with George Antheil were the intellects behind it all?

Hedy is ready for her "close-up," and Mr. Rhodes does indeed paint a stunning portrait of her. . . her beautiful mind as well as her beautiful face! Thank you Mr. Rhodes for this almost unbelievable tale which just had to be told. We can almost hear Hedy say, "it's about time!"

We look forward to the movie!

Based on the blurbs and cover of this book, I expected to learn a significant amount about Hedy Lamarr's life, and her life as an inventor. I'd heard of her, of course, but never realized that she had a hand in inventing spread spectrum communications. As a computer scientist specializing in networking, I was instantly intrigued.

The book was a quick, enjoyable read. It's well written, and provides a good mix of historical fact, often in the form of quotations from those involved.

However, I learned very little about Hedy herself. A few glimpses into her early life - mostly her first marriage and emergence as a movie star at a superficial level. A surprising amount of the book was spent discussing her co-inventor Peter Antheil's life and struggles, in many ways a more interesting story than Hedy's own. As well, more time was spent on the history of other persons - for examples Antheil's wife Boski - than was (in my opinion) relevant.

The book does do a good job of setting up the inspiration and motivation for the spread spectrum work, as well as its initial submission for patent protection and for military use. It also describes in broad, basic strokes the modern innovations whose lineage can be traced back to these spread spectrum techniques, such as wireless phones and communications.

If you want to learn about Hedy Lamarr, there must be other books more comprehensively describing her long life. Likewise, I would expect the history of spread spectrum to be more rigorously covered elsewhere.

If you're looking for a taste of the moment in time when a Hollywood star also helped conceptualize one of the most important communication innovations of our time, this is your book. If you're looking for a meal rather than an hors d'oeuvre, I'd recommend finding another book to satisfy your appetite.

Addendum: Allan Jirikovec (who commented on this review) recommended the following two books:
Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film (Screen Classics)

Beautiful, driven and smart, Austrian-born Hollywood movie star Hedy Lamarr liked to spend her spare time inventing things. Since she had listened when her first husband and his commercial cronies talked about weapons systems and the armaments business at their fancy, formal dinner parties, Hedy knew a surprising amount about the working mechanisms of the submarines Germans were using with such destructive force in the early days of WWII, so when she met iconoclastic and perennially broke composer George Antheil, they decided to invent an undetectable guidance system for torpedoes and sell it to the US Navy. In spite of the title, this book is as much about George Antheil as it is about Hedy Lamarr, and that's a good thing because he is equally fascinating. Like Hedy, Antheil had a surprising amount of scientific understanding. His knowledge about endocrinology was the reason they met--Hedy sought him out to see if he could enhance her figure's proportions--and his experience trying to coordinate numerous player pianos and airplane propellers for his "mechanistic" compositions meant he knew more than the average person about synchronizing machines.

This is a little book with a lot of range--some science, some biography, some military strategy and maybe most interesting, descriptions of the intellectual and artistic climates of Vienna, Paris and Hollywood during the 1920's, 30's and 40's.