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German Tech Update
Technology Milestones
An online supplement to the books
When in Germany and The German Way
by Hyde Flippo
Last updated: 11 Feb. 2005
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An Austrian-American Invention:
Spread Spectrum
It's almost too bizarre a script for Hollywood! In the 1940s, an Austrian emigré and Hollywood glamour girl helps the U.S. war effort by inventing a radio-control device for torpedoes that is immune to jamming. Her co-inventor is an avant-garde opera composer she meets at a Tinseltown dinner party, who suggests using the principle of a slotted player piano roll for the encoding program. The two patent their invention and live happily ever after.
American composer George Antheil, who spent much of his career in Europe, would later help Hedy Lamarr come up with the idea of encoding an anti-jamming radio device based on the 88 keys of a piano.
(Photo courtesy Chris Baumont's
George Antheil Web page.)
Except for the happy ending, the story is true. The film beauty is Hedy Lamarr. Her co-inventor, who died in 1959, was the American “bad boy of music,” George Antheil. The strange-but-true tale received new attention in March 1997 when the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) bestowed upon the two a belated award recognizing their scientific and patriotic contribution. In ceremonies in Burlingame (near San Francisco), Lamarr's son, Anthony Loder, accepted the EFF's Pioneer Award for his mother. Electronic guru and former Pioneer Award winner, David Hughes, nominated Lamarr and Antheil for the EFF award.
The Lamarr-Antheil patent expired after 17 years and was not renewed, but all later patents for spread spectrum technology acknowledge the original. Neither Lamarr nor Antheil ever received a dime for their technology, which was classified by the government until 1985, when the FCC made it available for limited use. Today the technology is promising improved cellular telephone use and increased telecommunications security, although there is already debate about how secure the technolgy will be in the long run, once it is more widespread.
In any event, the story of the Lamarr-Antheil patent is one of the more interesting legends of scientific invention.
For more, see: Hedy Lamarr (German-Hollywood)
The First Binary Digital Computer:
Konrad Zuse and the Z1
Years before the room-sized ENIAC computer in the U.S., Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) was working on his mechanical Z1 binary digital computer in Berlin in 1938. In the years between 1938 and 1945, Zuse and his colleagues, using an electro-mechanical concept, designed and built what are now considered to be the world's first functioning binary digital computers—the Z2 through the Z4. The Z2 was completed in 1940, the Z3 appeared the next year. In April 1945 the new Z4 had to be moved away from bomb-riddled Berlin. Ordered by the Ministry of Aviation to take the device to underground facilities in the Harz mountains, Zuse and his team were shocked to discover the terrible conditions under which the V1 and V2 rockets were being built. But with the help of Wernher von Braun's staff, they managed to move the Z4 south, to the Alpine village of Hinterstein in the Allgäu. After the war, the Z4 was set up and running at the Technical University in Zurich. Zuse KG, the inventor's own computer firm, was founded in 1949. Siemens AG bought Zuse out in 1956.
Today Zuse's Z4 machine is on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Although it is no longer in operating condition, the Z4 was the only one of Zuse's binary devices to survive the war. A reproduction of his Z1 can be seen at Berlin's German Technology Museum (Deutsches Technikmuseum).
MORE > Inventors - Erfinder (German @ About.com)
Copyright © 1996-2005 Hyde Flippo
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Web site Copyright © 1997-2005 Hyde Flippo. Graphic design by Erik Flippo.
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