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Look at the prior art. The key prior patent cited is BAESECKE, (2,134,850). This has a "wobbler" to change the transmitting frequency, which is fine, but that patent is vague as to how the receiving end stays in sync. Markey gets that syncing up transmitter and receiver is the real problem, and talks of it as a solved problem from television. (This is 1941, experimental TV exists.) Some mechanisms are discussed, borrowed from multiple player piano synchronization, which is where this technology came from.

Voice cryptosystems of the pre-WWII period included the Western Electric A-3 scrambler [1] There's one on eBay! [2] That split audio into a number of frequency bands, which were shifted and reassembled. At the receiving end, the process was reversed. The shift pattern changed periodically, on the order of tens of seconds. That was slow enough that keeping the thing in sync was possible with clockwork of the period. Note that this is working on the audio, not the RF; it's a scrambler, not a frequency hopper. This is what AT&T used for transatlantic commercial voice. Worked OK, mediocre security. Only 6 different frequency shift patterns were in use at a time. The Germans cracked it.

This is not the better known SIGSALY. That's a similar concept, but with a lot more audio channels, much more frequent changes, a one-time key for the changes, and more hardware than some mainframe computers. The A-3 was a desk-side wooden box. Neither system does frequency-hopping of the RF signal.

Hedy Lamarr's first husband was an arms manufacturer, and she apparently paid attention when visiting the factories. Hence the radio-controlled torpedo, which is close to Tesla's radio-controlled boat.

MARKEY (2,292,387) describes a cross between a radio-controlled boat and a set of synchronized player pianos. There's some handwaving around the sync problem. The trouble with syncing a frequency hopper is that you have trouble even finding the signal to get started. But if you're launching a torpedo or a bomb from a larger craft, both ends of the connection can be started in sync and will probably stay in sync long enough for the bombing run. Doing this with a player piano roll reader, vacuum pump and all, is probably not the right approach.

Trying to get things to sync up reliably has a long history. Edison's first useful invention was a way to get stock tickers to sync. There's a long history of clunky mechanisms, early ones involving flywheels or big tuning forks, and later electronic ones with too many screwdriver adjustments. Not until the invention of phase locked loops did it really Just Work. (I'm into restoring early Teletype machines, and I'm way too aware of the early days of sync problems.)

Markey was just too early. Reasonable idea, but not practical at the time due to lack of supporting technology.

[1] https://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/2012/02/intercepted-...

[2] https://www.ebay.com/itm/205373065319

Ouch.

From the article: "A letter on 3 October 1941 from the Lyon and Lyon attorney to Lamarr and Antheil says '...we rather doubted at the time that method claim 7 would be considered patentable, since the invention appears to reside more in a new apparatus than in a new method.' Thus, the attorney representing the applicants agreed with the patent examiner that the evidence was against Lamarr-Antheil’s definitive method claim to FHSS, which was claim 7."

This analysis makes it pretty clear that EFF's 1997 assertion that she and Antheil "developed and [...] patented the concept of 'frequency-hopping' that is now the basis for the spread spectrum radio systems" is flatly untrue.

This isn't to say that she wasn't an inventor or innovator, or didn't put together existing known techniques in a new way to address a relevant and interesting problem.

But frequency hopping without the ability to (re-)synchronize is hardly practical. It's like inventing the principle of the machine gun, firing many bullets in quick succession, without inventing the mechanism of automatic removal of the spent shell and pushing in a new round. Such prior art would not dethrone Hiram Maxim.

Same here: if it's the Lamar's invention that makes frequency hopping practical, then she is still the (co-)inventor of most of modern radio communication.

I think you mean it would not dethrone Dr. Gatling, whose contraption did indeed automatically remove spent shells, which illustrates just how fuzzy these questions of attribution are.

The thing approved by the patent office is 100% specific to a mechanism using two "moving" "elongated strips" to encode a sequence of frequency changes. It doesn't explain how they are kept synchronized, or provide a way to recover from loss of sync. Perhaps torpedoes were a case where an initial synchronization would work long enough.

As said before, the idea of coordinated frequency hopping was already known at the time.

The stories of Hedy Lamarr and the computer women at NASA get repeated endlessly as if they're the only contributions women have ever made to CS, which must be absolutely discouraging to the young girls who are interested enough to dig deeper and find out that Hedy's contribution was essentially negligible.

It'd be much better to talk about Liskov, Goldberg, the women at Bluetooth SIG, or the countless other examples available.

Diana Merry, Lorinda Cherry, Fran Allen, Lynn Conway, Grace Hopper. There were numerous smaller contributors as well; my friend Ann Hardy, for example, had to rewrite the OS for her cloud computing startup from the ground up to get it to be usable, but got denied stock options because she was a woman and eventually got pushed into management.

The hyperbole that 'Hedy Lamarr invented Bluetooth' seems innocuous to me - it's a pop culture thing, like the claim that 'Steve Jobs invented the personal computer'.

I wouldn't lose sleep over hypothetical crestfallen child engineers. If they read a biography of Hedy Lamarr, they'll finish it more impressed, not less. She was an exceptional person.

That sounds like "Cocaine seems innocuous to me—it's a party drug, like strychnine."

It's hard to imagine a historical myth about personal computing more harmful than the myth that it was invented by a man who spent his life trying to take the power of personal computing away from the people!

Afaik the basis of the Bluetooth thing is that out of all the different kinds of spread-spectrum radio we use now, Bluetooth happens to be the closest to her original design. So it's a drastic simplification, but not wrong.

What’s discouraging is seeing that any contribution by a woman is going to be picked over and minimized.

The intention behind these stories is to tell learners "people like you made great contributions, so can you". If your main example is a woman whose contribution is a patent that didn't inspire any of the things popularly attributed to it, the actual subtext you're communicating is that there are no better examples.

"You'll be minimized too!" isn't exactly a great subtext to encourage interest in the field, compared to other positive examples like the people I've already mentioned.

Yes, whenever I hear a story about someone I assume they were chosen because there are no better examples. I only listen to stories about the paragons of humanity. My brain has space for knowledge of like 3 people tops. Good point.

That is about the least charitable interpretation of that comment.

It will be even more discouraging now that the well actually guys will say that it wasn't true...

It's HEDLEY!

Quote is from Blazing Saddles.

1:28

https://youtu.be/g2Bp8SqYrnE

He says it many times in the film.

The name "Hedley Lamarr" was, obviously, a play on Hedy Lamarr, who sued the filmmakers for using her name.

Mel Brooks did not even try to defend against this. He is a huge admirer of her. He thought it was appropriate to pay her and apologise for any offence she may have taken from the gag. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQef9PqjKbG/

No it’s not? Her Wikipedia page says “Hedy”

It’s a quote from a running joke in the film Blazing Saddles

It's a reference to a famous Mel Brooks cowboy comedy (Unforgiven, 1992)

Which itself was a sequel to Brooks's first and underappreciated Western, The Wild Bunch (1969)

[dead]

A = Almost??

Yes, Almost. As long as you don't scroll down too far.

Dude, that page gets you an instant sitdown with HR.

Not in France.

I find the article unconvincing, although I'm open to being convinced. With historical hindsight, it should be easy to see if the Lamarr et al patent seems novel. Just because an examiner doesn't allow a claim, I don't see that as strong evidence it wasn't novel at the time. They always are rejecting claims, sometime for good reason, sometimes not.

A more convincing article would focus on purported prior art patents, and let the reader judge if really anticipated frequency hopping.

George Antheil’s autobiography, Bad Boy of Music, is quite entertaining. In it he recounts his adventures related to this patent. If I recall correctly (I read it decades ago but I think I’m right here), he describes a close and co-equal collaboration with his friend Hedy Lamarr on this invention. Therefore I think these remarks by the author:

‘Since the actual invention is a player-piano-like mechanism, and since experimental musician George Antheil had expertise in the inner workings of player pianos, and further since Hedy Lamarr evidently had no such expertise, it may be more appropriate to call the Lamarr-Antheil patent “Antheil’s patent.”’

are inappropriate and unjustified.

Bizarre “research.” Why go out of your way to cast doubts on Lamarr’s contributions to the patent. He offers no evidence, or even a compelling theory as to why she would wrongly have her name on it.

> Lamarr … may have contributed little to the insignificant invention actually taught by the Lamarr-Antheil patent.

Sounds like he’s got a chip on his shoulder over… something. Despicable stuff.

There's only so big and often repeated that a false legal claim based on open records can get before someone who knows what they're looking at gets around to reading it.

Correcting the historical record isn't despicable. You'd honestly rather people go around parroting a myth because it makes you feel better?

Maybe the author uncovered it as part of a separate research effort and decided to contribute to the record. Maybe he really does have it out for women. Point is we don't know, and it's rude to assume malice when there are many other possible motivations that aren't "despicable" in any way.

There’s nothing being corrected by making baseless insinuations.

For my reading he didn't cast out on the patent - - the first six parts were granted to her. Only the part that would have contributed to what most people talk about turns out to be not granted because of "previous art" , that is, someone else beat her to it

I have noticed this behavior in dudes, where they go far outside of the norm in trying to take down womens' achievements.

People are at least as often evaluating men's performances. i.e. "Was Stephen Hawking overhyped by other physicists to help him not die in poverty?", "How good was Riemann compared to Gauss?" etc. Not hard to find people who argue that Steve Jobs or Elon Musk are overrated buffoons

This is probably more of a managerial thing than anything else — after all, most men's performance undergoes constant evaluation. Certainly in the workplace, and often in personal relationships as well. If they fail, they don't get as much to eat and are typically deserted

And such evaluations are biased against praise, except for a deified few. For example, successful musicians frequently mention that record labels make them feel like underachievers, even when they top the charts