从好莱坞女星到 “WiFi 之母”:跳频技术背后的跨界传奇女性——海蒂・拉玛

注:本文为 “海蒂・拉玛” 相关文章合辑。

机翻,未校。


The Mother of Wi-Fi: Hedy Lamarr’s Contributions to Technology

Wi-Fi 之母:Hedy Lamarr 对技术的贡献

Date:November 9, 2024
Posted By:troymart

The Mother of Wi-Fi: Hedy Lamarr’s Contributions to Technology

Wi-Fi 之母:Hedy Lamarr 对技术的贡献

Heidi Lamarr was a glamorous and stylish actress from the golden aga of cinema and a regular on the red carpets. She was also a brilliant thinker who laid the foundation for modern wireless communication, including Wi-Fi. Plot twist! This isn’t just an overblown script pitch—this is the true story of Hedy Lamarr, the mother of Wi-Fi.

海蒂·拉玛 (Heidi Lamarr) 是一位来自电影黄金时期的迷人时尚女演员,也是红毯上的常客。她也是一位杰出的思想家,为现代无线通信(包括 Wi-Fi)奠定了基础。情节转折!这不仅仅是一个夸张的剧本宣传,而是 Wi-Fi 之母 Hedy Lamarr 的真实故事。

From Screen to Spectrum: The Genius of Hedy Lamarr

从银幕到光谱:海蒂·拉玛的天才

Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Kiesler on November 9th, 1914, in Vienna, was not only an acclaimed actress but also a prolific inventor with a knack for engineering. She once held a patent for a technology that seemed more suited to a James Bond movie than reality. She invented a secret communication system in 1941—something known as “frequency hopping.” You might be wondering what a glamorous movie star was doing fiddling around with advanced communication techniques during World War II. Well, when Hedy wasn’t busy being declared the most beautiful woman in film, she was helping to change the future of wireless communication.
海蒂·拉玛 (Hedy Lamarr) 于 1914 年 11 月 9 日出生于维也纳,原名海德薇·基斯勒 (Hedwig Kiesler),她不仅是一位备受赞誉的女演员,还是一位多产的发明家,具有工程学的诀窍。她曾经拥有一项技术专利,这项技术似乎更适合詹姆斯·邦德电影,而不是现实。她在 1941 年发明了一种秘密通信系统——一种被称为“跳频”的系统。您可能想知道,在第二次世界大战期间,一位迷人的电影明星在玩弄先进的通信技术是做什么的。当 Hedy 不忙于被宣布为电影界最美丽的女人时,她正在帮助改变无线通信的未来。

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Technology Pioneer – Hedy Lamarr

Frequency Hopping: Solving a Problem with a Piano

跳频:解决钢琴问题

The technical idea behind Hedy’s invention—frequency hopping—was simple enough in principle but ingeniously applied. During WWII, torpedoes were primarily guided via radio signals. The trouble was that enemy forces could easily jam these signals, causing torpedoes to go off course. Collaborating with composer George Antheil, who had a special talent for synchronizing multiple player pianos, they came up with a method of rapidly switching communication frequencies to prevent jamming.
Hedy 发明背后的技术理念 — 跳频 — 原则上很简单,但应用却很巧妙。在二战期间,鱼雷主要通过无线电信号进行制导。问题是敌军很容易干扰这些信号,导致鱼雷偏离航线。他们与作曲家 George Antheil 合作,后者在同步多手钢琴方面具有特殊才能,他们想出了一种快速切换通信频率以防止干扰的方法。

Imagine you’re in a room full of toddlers, all armed with toy xylophones, making a cacophony of noise. Now, suppose you and your friend decide to have a secret musical conversation by only playing certain notes at certain times, skipping to different notes quickly and unpredictably. Even amidst the din, your friend could receive your messages because they know the exact sequence of changes—everyone else would be left guessing, or just plain confused. That’s frequency hopping in a nutshell: pseudo randomly switching channels so fast that no one can keep up or interfere.
想象一下,你在一个满是蹒跚学步的孩子房间里,他们都拿着玩具木琴,发出嘈杂的声音。现在,假设你和你的朋友决定进行一次秘密的音乐对话,只在特定时间弹奏某些音符,快速且不可预测地跳到不同的音符。即使在喧嚣中,您的朋友也可以收到您的消息,因为他们知道变化的确切顺序——其他人都会猜测,或者只是感到困惑。简而言之,这就是跳频:伪随机切换频道的速度如此之快,以至于没有人可以跟上或干扰。

Hedy and George received a patent for their invention in 1942, which they gifted to the U.S. Navy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t used during the war—the Navy shelved it until much later. Little did they know, Hedy’s pioneering work would become fundamental to modern communication technologies like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.
Hedy 和 George 于 1942 年获得了他们的发明专利,并将其赠予美国海军。不幸的是,它在战争期间没有被使用——海军直到很久以后才将其搁置。他们几乎不知道,Hedy 的开创性工作将成为 Wi-Fi、蓝牙和 GPS 等现代通信技术的基础。

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US Patent for Frequency-Hopping

The Wi-Fi Standard: A Historical Hop, Skip, and Jump Wi-Fi

标准:历史跳跃、跳跃和跳跃

Fast forward to 1997, when the IEEE released the original 802.11 Wi-Fi standard—heavily relying on the concepts Hedy developed decades earlier. The 802.11 standard featured several methods for managing wireless communication, including Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS), Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), and even infra-red (IR) communication.
快进到 1997 年,当时 IEEE 发布了最初的 802.11 Wi-Fi 标准,严重依赖 Hedy 几十年前开发的概念。802.11 标准具有多种管理无线通信的方法,包括跳频扩频 (FHSS)、直接序列扩频 (DSSS),甚至红外 (IR) 通信。

FHSS, the direct descendant of Hedy’s frequency hopping, divided the available frequency spectrum into several channels and rapidly hopped between them according to a pseudorandom sequence. It was like playing musical chairs with radio frequencies—as long as you knew the sequence, you could stay in tune. DSSS, on the other hand, spread the signal over a wider band using a pseudo-noise code, which made it more resilient to interference and eavesdropping. Think of it as trying to spread peanut butter over an entire loaf of bread rather than a single slice. Meanwhile, IR communication was just like using a TV remote—pointing and clicking light at a target—which seems quaint now but was a real contender in the early wireless game.
FHSS 是 Hedy 跳频的直接后代,它将可用频谱分成几个通道,并根据伪随机序列在它们之间快速跳转。这就像用无线电频率玩音乐椅一样——只要你知道顺序,你就可以保持音调。另一方面,DSSS 使用伪噪声代码将信号传播到更宽的频段,这使其更能抵御干扰和窃听。把它想象成试图将花生酱涂抹在整条面包上,而不是一片面包上。同时,红外通信就像使用电视遥控器一样 - 将光线对准目标并点击,这在现在看来很古怪,但在早期的无线游戏中却是一个真正的竞争者。

The Fabulous (and Flawed) Frequency Hopping

精彩的(和有缺陷的)跳频

FHSS had its fair share of perks and pitfalls. Let’s break it down:
FHSS 有其相当多的好处和陷阱。让我们来分析一下:

  1. Throughput: Throughput wasn’t exactly FHSS’s strong suit. Since the system kept hopping around like a jittery squirrel, it was hard to make the most efficient use of the available spectrum. FHSS was a little bit like trying to read a book by flashing a strobe light—possible, but not exactly ideal. Whenever the signal was hopping, or the strobe light was off, no data could be transferred. Data could only be exchanged during the dwell time when the signal remained on a channel, or the strobe light was on. If you wanted blazing fast speed, this was not to path to take.
  2. 吞吐量:吞吐量并不是 FHSS 的强项。由于系统像一只紧张的松鼠一样不断跳来跳去,因此很难最有效地利用可用频谱。FHSS 有点像试图通过闪烁频闪灯来阅读一本书——可能,但并不完全理想。每当信号跳动或频闪灯熄灭时,就无法传输任何数据。只有在信号保持在信道上或频闪灯亮起的停留时间内才能交换数据。如果您想要极快的速度,这不是要走的路。
  3. Interference Avoidance: On the flip side, FHSS was brilliant for interference avoidance. If someone tried to jam your signal, they’d have to be as fast and unpredictable as you—and nobody likes competing with jittery squirrels. This feature made FHSS especially attractive for early Wi-Fi networks, which had to deal with various sources of interference (think microwaves, cordless phones, and probably even your blender).
  4. 干扰规避:另一方面,FHSS 在规避干扰方面非常出色。如果有人试图干扰您的信号,他们必须和您一样快速且不可预测——而且没有人喜欢与紧张不安的松鼠竞争。此功能使 FHSS 对早期的 Wi-Fi 网络特别有吸引力,因为早期的 Wi-Fi 网络必须处理各种干扰源(想想微波炉、无绳电话,甚至可能是您的搅拌机)。
  5. Spectral Density: Spectral density refers to how much energy you can fit into a particular slice of the radio spectrum. With FHSS, the energy was spread across the band by hopping around, which meant it had a relatively low spectral density compared to techniques like DSSS. Imagine trying to light up a football field with a pocket flashlight versus a laser pointer. FHSS would be like trying to light up the field with a laser pulsing 1600 times a second pseudo randomly across field hoping to be fast enough – giving the illusion of a lit-up field. DSSS is more like using the flashlight at the 50 yard line (channel 6) at max power hoping all the clients at the football field are covered.
  6. 频谱密度:频谱密度是指您可以容纳多少能量进入无线电频谱的特定切片。使用 FHSS,能量通过跳动在整个频段中传播,这意味着与 DSSS 等技术相比,它具有相对较低的频谱密度。想象一下,试图用袖珍手电筒而不是激光笔照亮足球场。FHSS 就像试图用每秒 1600 次伪脉冲的激光在场中随机脉冲来照亮场,希望速度足够快——给人一种场被照亮的错觉。DSSS 更像是在 50 码线(通道 6)以最大功率使用手电筒,希望足球场上的所有客户端都被覆盖。
  7. Spectral Efficiency: As far as spectral efficiency goes, FHSS was not the star of the show. By frequently hopping, it didn’t make as efficient use of available spectrum as some other methods. DSSS, which used more advanced coding techniques, offered a better way of cramming data into those precious radio waves.
  8. 频谱效率:就频谱效率而言,FHSS 并不是展会上的明星。由于频繁跳跃,它没有像其他一些方法那样有效地利用可用频谱。DSSS 使用更高级的编码技术,提供了一种将数据塞入这些珍贵无线电波的更好方法。

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Example of Frequency Hopping

FHSS in Bluetooth

蓝牙中的 FHSS

Bluetooth, like Wi-Fi, also took advantage of frequency hopping. Bluetooth’s implementation of FHSS is known as Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH). In Bluetooth, the 2.4 GHz ISM (Industrial, Scientific, and Medical) band is divided into 79 channels, each 1 MHz wide. Devices using Bluetooth communicate by hopping between these channels up to 1,600 times per second. The rapid hopping reduces the likelihood of interference, particularly in environments where multiple wireless devices are competing for the same spectrum.

蓝牙和 Wi-Fi 一样,也利用了跳频。蓝牙对 FHSS 的实现称为自适应跳频 (AFH)。在蓝牙中,2.4 GHz ISM(工业、科学和医疗)频段分为 79 个通道,每个通道的宽度为 1 MHz。使用蓝牙的设备通过在这些通道之间跳转进行通信,最高可达每秒 1,600 次。快速跳频降低了干扰的可能性,尤其是在多个无线设备争夺同一频谱的环境中。

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2.4GHz spectrum courtesy of Wireless LAN Professionals_

Bluetooth’s AFH adds another layer of sophistication. Unlike traditional FHSS, which blindly hops across all available channels, AFH actively monitors the quality of each channel. If a particular channel is experiencing a lot of interference—say, from a nearby Wi-Fi network or a microwave oven—Bluetooth can adapt by excluding that channel from its hopping sequence. This helps to improve overall communication reliability and maintain connection quality, even in congested environments.
蓝牙的 AFH 增加了另一层复杂性。与在所有可用频道之间盲目跳转的传统 FHSS 不同,AFH 主动监控每个频道的质量。如果特定信道受到大量干扰(例如,来自附近的 Wi-Fi 网络或微波炉),蓝牙可以通过将该信道从其跳频序列中排除来进行调整。这有助于提高整体通信可靠性并保持连接质量,即使在拥塞的环境中也是如此。

By dynamically adjusting its hopping pattern, Bluetooth can avoid heavily used frequencies while still benefiting from the interference resilience of FHSS. This is particularly important in environments like call centers or conference centers, where there could be a high density of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi devices operating concurrently.
通过动态调整其跳频模式,蓝牙可以避免高频使用,同时仍受益于 FHSS 的抗干扰能力。这在呼叫中心或会议中心等环境中尤为重要,因为在这些环境中,蓝牙和 Wi-Fi 设备可能会同时运行。

Hedy’s Legacy Lives On

Hedy 的遗产永存

FHSS eventually fell out of favour as more advanced methods of spectrum management and data encoding came along, but its principles remain foundational. Hedy’s brainchild paved the way for DSSS, OFDM, and OFDMA – the more advanced forms of spread-spectrum technology we use today in both Wi-Fi and cellular communication.
随着更先进的频谱管理和数据编码方法的出现,FHSS 最终失宠,但其原则仍然是基础。Hedy 的创意为 DSSS、OFDM 和 OFDMA 铺平了道路,这是我们今天在 Wi-Fi 和蜂窝通信中使用的更先进的扩频技术形式。

Think about that next time you’re binge-watching a show over Wi-Fi. Hedy Lamarr wasn’t just a pretty face on the screen—she was also one of the brilliant minds that made Wi-Fi possible. Despite facing challenges that came from stereotypical views of women, especially women in Hollywood, Hedy’s tenacity and genius made her a true trailblazer in technology.
下次您通过 Wi-Fi 狂欢观看节目时,请考虑一下。Hedy Lamarr 不仅是银幕上的漂亮面孔,她还是使 Wi-Fi 成为可能的聪明才智之一。尽管面临来自对女性,尤其是好莱坞女性的刻板印象的挑战,但 Hedy 的坚韧和天才使她成为真正的技术开拓者。

So, here’s to Hedy Lamarr— Slàinte – the unlikely “mother of Wi-Fi”. However, let’s not forget, Bluetooth is the dominant technology still leveraging her contribution. You might not be able to thank her in person, but you can celebrate her every time you stream audio to your wireless headphones.
所以,向 Hedy Lamarr 致敬 - Slàinte - 不太可能的“Wi-Fi 之母”。 然而,我们不要忘记,蓝牙是仍在利用她的贡献的主导技术。您可能无法亲自感谢她,但您可以在每次将音频流式传输到无线耳机时庆祝她。

If you are hungry for more details around the development of frequency hopping technology and learn about additional contributions from other researchers and scientists, click on this article written by Tony Rothman, published by American Scientist – “Random Paths to Frequency Hopping.”
如果您渴望了解有关跳频技术发展的更多详细信息,并了解其他研究人员和科学家的其他贡献,请单击 Tony Rothman 撰写的这篇文章,该文章由 American Scientist 出版 – “Random Paths to Frequency Hopping”。

Slàinte Mhath! Slàinte Mhath!

Resources 资源

802.11 “Prime” – original standard from 1997
802.11 “Prime” – 1997 年的原始标准

https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/802.11/1163

802.11-2020 – Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications
802.11-2020 – 无线 LAN 介质访问控制 (MAC) 和物理层 (PHY) 规范

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9363693

Bluetooth Core Specification Version 6.0 from Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group)
Bluetooth SIG(特别兴趣小组)的蓝牙核心规范 6.0 版

https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/core60-html

Random Paths to Frequency Hopping, by Tony Rothman via American Scientist


How Hollywood Star Hedy Lamarr Invented the Tech Behind Wi-Fi

好莱坞明星 Hedy Lamarr 如何发明 Wi-Fi 背后的技术

Lamarr was a glamorous movie star by day, but she was also a gifted, self-trained inventor who developed a technology to help sink Nazi U-boats.

拉马尔白天是一位迷人的电影明星,但她也是一位才华横溢、自学成才的发明家,她开发了一种帮助击沉纳粹 U 型潜艇的技术。

Dave Roos

Published: March 05, 2024

Last Updated: February 18, 2025

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In the 1940s, few Hollywood actresses were more famous and more famously beautiful than Hedy Lamarr. Yet despite starring in dozens of films and gracing the cover of every Hollywood celebrity magazine, few people knew Hedy was also a gifted inventor. In fact, one of the technologies she co-invented laid a key foundation for future communication systems, including GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

在 1940 年代,很少有好莱坞女演员比海蒂·拉玛 (Hedy Lamarr) 更著名、更出名。然而,尽管他出演了数十部电影,并登上了每本好莱坞名人杂志的封面,但很少有人知道海蒂也是一位才华横溢的发明家。事实上,她参与发明的其中一项技术为未来的通信系统奠定了关键基础,包括 GPS、蓝牙和 Wi-Fi。

“Hedy always felt that people didn’t appreciate her for her intelligence—that her beauty got in the way,” says Richard Rhodes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who wrote a biography about Hedy.

“海蒂总觉得人们不欣赏她的智慧——她的美貌阻碍了她,”普利策奖得主历史学家理查德·罗兹 (Richard Rhodes) 说,他写了一本关于海蒂的传记。

After working 12- or 15-hour days at MGM Studios, Hedy would often skip the Hollywood parties or carousing with one of her many suitors and instead sit down at her “inventing table.”
在米高梅影城每天工作 12 或 15 小时后,海蒂经常跳过好莱坞派对或与她的众多追求者之一狂欢,而是坐在她的“发明桌”旁。

The Hollywood Actress Who Invented WiFi

发明 WiFi 的好莱坞女演员

Hedy Lamarr, Hollywood actress, is known for more than her acting—she invented a signal-hopping technology used in Wi-Fi.

好莱坞女演员 Hedy Lamarr 不仅以演技而闻名,她还发明了一种用于 Wi-Fi 的信号跳频技术。

“Hedy had a drafting table and a whole wall full of engineering books. It was a serious hobby,” says Rhodes, author of Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World.

“Hedy 有一张绘图桌和一整面墙的工程书籍。这是一个严肃的爱好,“罗兹说,她是《海蒂的愚蠢:世界上最美丽的女人海蒂·拉玛的生平和突破性发明》的作者。

While not a trained engineer or mathematician, Hedy Lamarr was an ingenious problem-solver. Most of her inventions were practical solutions to everyday problems, like a tissue box attachment for depositing used tissues or a glow-in-the-dark dog collar.

虽然 Hedy Lamarr 不是训练有素的工程师或数学家,但她是一位天才的问题解决者。她的大多数发明都是解决日常问题的实际解决方案,例如用于存放用过的组织的纸巾盒附件或在黑暗中发光的狗项圈。

It was during World War II, that she developed “frequency hopping,” an invention that’s now recognized as a fundamental technology for secure communications. She didn’t receive credit for the innovation until very late in life.

正是在第二次世界大战期间,她开发了“跳频”,这项发明现在被认为是安全通信的基础技术。她直到晚年才因这项创新而受到赞誉。

Hedy Lamarr’s Childhood in Austria

海蒂·拉马尔在奥地利的童年

Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Kiesler in Vienna, Austria in 1914. She was the only child of a wealthy secular Jewish family. From her father, a bank director, and her mother, a concert pianist, Hedy received a debutante’s education—ballet classes, piano lessons and equestrian training.

海蒂·拉玛 (Hedy Lamarr) 于 1914 年出生于奥地利维也纳,原名海德薇·伊娃·基斯勒 (Hedwig Eva Kiesler)。她是一个富有的世俗犹太家庭的独生子。Hedy 的父亲是银行董事,母亲是音乐会钢琴家,她接受了初出茅庐的教育——芭蕾舞课、钢琴课和马术训练。

There were signs at a young age that Hedy had an engineer’s natural curiosity. On long walks through the bustling streets of Vienna, Hedy’s father would explain how the streetcars worked and how their electricity was generated at the power plant. At five years old, Hedy took apart a music box and reassembled it piece by piece.

有迹象表明,海蒂在年轻时就有工程师天生的好奇心。在维也纳熙熙攘攘的街道上长途跋涉时,Hedy 的父亲会解释有轨电车的工作原理以及它们在发电厂的发电方式。五岁时,Hedy 拆开了一个音乐盒,一块一块地重新组装。

“Hedy did not grow up with any technical education, but she did have this personal connection,” says Rhodes. “She loved her father dearly, so it’s easy to see how from that she might have developed an interest in the subject. And also it prepared her to be what she really was, a kind of amateur inventor.”

“Hedy 没有接受过任何技术教育,但她确实有这种个人联系,”Rhodes 说。“她非常爱她的父亲,所以很容易看出她是如何从中对这个主题产生兴趣的。这也让她成为真正的自己,一种业余发明家。

Hedy’s Movie Debut as Teen Hedy

作为 Teen 的电影处女作

Even if Hedy had wanted to be a professional engineer or scientist, that career path wasn’t available to Viennese girls in the 1930s. Instead, teenage Hedy set her sights on the movie industry.

即使 Hedy 想成为一名专业工程师或科学家,但在 1930 年代,维也纳女孩也没有这条职业道路。相反,十几岁的海蒂将目光投向了电影业。

“At 16,” says Rhodes, “Hedy forged a note to her teachers in Vienna saying, ‘My daughter won’t be able to come to school today,’ so she could go down to the biggest movie studio in Europe and walk in the door and say, ‘Hi, I want to be a movie star.’”

“16 岁时,”罗兹说,“海蒂伪造了一张纸条给她在维也纳的老师,上面写着’我女儿今天不能来上学’,这样她就可以去欧洲最大的电影制片厂,走进门说,'嗨,我想成为一名电影明星。

Hedy started as a script girl, but quickly earned some walk-on parts. The Austrian director Max Reinhardt took Hedy to Berlin when she starred in a few forgettable films before landing a role at age 18 in a racy film called Ecstasy by the Czech director Gustav Machatý. The film was denounced by Pope Pious XI, banned from Germany and blocked by US Customs authorities for being “dangerously indecent.”

Hedy 最初是一名剧本女郎,但很快就获得了一些临时角色。奥地利导演马克斯·莱因哈特 (Max Reinhardt) 带海蒂去了柏林,她出演了几部令人难忘的电影,然后在 18 岁时在捷克导演古斯塔夫·马哈蒂 (Gustav Machatý) 的一部名为《狂喜》的活泼电影中扮演了一个角色。这部电影受到教皇虔诚十一世的谴责,在德国被禁止,并被美国海关当局以“危险的不雅”为由阻止。

Reinhardt called Hedy “the most beautiful woman in Europe,” and even before Ecstasy, Hedy was turning heads in theater productions across Europe. It was during the Viennese run of a popular play called Sissy that Hedy caught the eye of a wealthy Austrian munitions baron named Fritz Mandl. Hedy and Mandl married in 1933, but the union was stifling from the start. Mandl forced his wife to accompany him as he struck deals with customers, including officials from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, including Mussolini himself.

莱因哈特称海蒂为“欧洲最美丽的女人”,甚至在《狂喜》之前,海蒂就已经在欧洲的戏剧作品中引起了人们的注意。正是在维也纳上演一部名为《娘娘腔》的流行戏剧期间,海蒂引起了一位名叫弗里茨·曼德尔 (Fritz Mandl) 的富有奥地利军火大亨的注意。Hedy 和 Mandl 于 1933 年结婚,但这种结合从一开始就令人窒息。曼德尔强迫妻子陪他一起与客户达成交易,其中包括纳粹德国和法西斯意大利的官员,包括墨索里尼本人。

“She would sit at dinner bored out of her mind with discussions of bombs and torpedoes, and yet she was also absorbing it,” says Rhodes. “Of course, nobody asked her any questions. She was supposed to be beautiful and silent. But I think it was through that experience that she developed her considerable knowledge about how torpedo guidance worked.”

“她会坐在晚餐时无聊地讨论炸弹和鱼雷,但她也在吸收它,”罗兹说。“当然,没有人问她任何问题。她应该是美丽而沉默的。但我认为正是通过那次经历,她才对鱼雷制导的工作原理有了相当多的了解。

In 1937, Hedy fled her unhappy marriage (Mandl was deeply paranoid that Hedy was cheating on him) and also fled Austria, a country aligned with Adolf Hitler’s anti-Jewish policies.

1937 年,海蒂逃离了她不幸的婚姻(曼德尔非常偏执地认为海蒂欺骗了他),还逃离了奥地利,一个与阿道夫·希特勒的反犹政策保持一致的国家。

A New Country and a New Name

新国家和新名称

Hedy landed in London, where Louis B. Mayer of MGM Studios was actively buying up the contracts of Jewish actors who could no longer work safely in Europe. Hedy met with Mayer, but refused his lowball offer of $125 a week for an exclusive MGM contract. In a savvy move, Hedy booked passage to the United States on the luxury liner SS Normandie, the same ship on which Mayer was traveling home.

海蒂来到伦敦,米高梅工作室的路易斯·梅耶 (Louis B. Mayer) 正在积极购买无法再在欧洲安全工作的犹太演员的合同。海蒂会见了梅耶尔,但拒绝了他以每周 125 美元的价格获得米高梅独家合同的低价报价。海蒂明智地预订了豪华邮轮 SS Normandie 前往美国的船票,梅耶当时正乘坐这艘船回家。

“She made a point of being seen on deck looking beautiful and playing tennis with some of the handsome guys on board,” says Rhodes. “By the time they got to New York, Hedy had cut a much better deal with Mayer”—$500 a week—“with the proviso that she’d learn how to speak English in six months.”

罗德斯说:“她很注重让人们看到她在甲板上看起来很漂亮,还和船上的一些帅哥打网球。”“当他们到达纽约时,海蒂和梅耶尔达成了一份更好的协议”——每周500美元——“附带条件是她要在六个月内学会说英语。”

Mayer had another demand—she had to change her name. Hedwig Kiesler was too German-sounding. Mayer’s wife was a fan of 1920s actress Barbara La Marr (who died tragically at 29 years old), so Mayer decided that his new MGM actor would now be known as Hedy Lamarr.

梅耶尔还有另一个要求 —— 她必须改名。海德维格・基斯勒(Hedwig Kiesler)太有德国口音了。梅耶尔的妻子是 20 世纪 20 年代女演员芭芭拉・拉玛(芭芭拉在 29 岁时不幸去世)的粉丝,所以梅耶尔决定将他的新米高梅演员改名为海蒂・拉玛。

Actress by Day, Inventor by Night

白天的女演员,夜晚的发明家

It didn’t take long for Hedy to emerge as a bright new star in Hollywood. Her breakout role was alongside Charles Boyer (another European transplant) in Algiers (1938). From there, the MGM machine put Hedy to work cranking out multiple feature films a year throughout the 1940s.

没过多久,海蒂就成为好莱坞一颗璀璨的新星。她的突破性角色是在阿尔及尔(1938 年)与查尔斯·博耶(另一位欧洲移植者)并肩作战。从那时起,米高梅机器让海蒂在整个 1940 年代每年制作多部故事片。

“Any girl can be glamorous,” Hedy once quipped. “All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”

“任何女孩都可以迷人,”海蒂曾经打趣道。“你所要做的就是站着不动,看起来很愚蠢。”

As much as Hedy enjoyed her Hollywood stardom, her first love was still tinkering and problem-solving. She found a kindred spirit in Howard Hughes, the film producer and aeronautical engineer. When Hedy shared an idea for a dissolvable tablet that could turn a soldier’s canteen into a soft drink, Hughes lent her a few of his chemists.

尽管 Hedy 很享受她的好莱坞明星生涯,但她的初恋仍然是修补和解决问题。她在电影制片人兼航空工程师霍华德·休斯 (Howard Hughes) 身上找到了志同道合的人。当 Hedy 分享了一种可以将士兵水壶变成软饮料的可溶解片剂的想法时,Hughes 借给了她一些他的化学家。

But most of Hedy’s work was done at home at her engineering table where she’d sketch designs for creative solutions to practical problems. In addition to the tissue box attachment and the light-up dog collar, Hedy devised a special shower seat for the elderly that swiveled safely out of a bathtub.

但 Hedy 的大部分工作都是在家里的工程桌上完成的,她会在那里为实际问题绘制设计草图,以创造性地解决问题。除了纸巾盒附件和发光的狗项圈外,Hedy 还为老年人设计了一种特殊的淋浴座椅,可以安全地从浴缸中旋转出来。

“She was an inventor,” says Rhodes. “If you’ve ever been around real inventors, they’re often not people with a particularly deep education. They’re people who think about the world in a certain way. When they find something that doesn’t work right, instead of just swearing or whatever the rest of us do, they figure out how to fix it.”

“她是一位发明家,”罗兹说。“如果你曾经与真正的发明家在一起,他们往往不是受过特别深教育的人。他们是以某种方式思考世界的人。当他们发现某些事情不对劲时,他们不会只是发誓或我们其他人所做的任何事情,而是想办法解决它。

Deconstructing History: U-Boats

解构历史:U 型潜艇

These deadly German submarines dominated the waters in both WWI and WWII.

这些致命的德国潜艇在第一次世界大战和第二次世界大战中都主宰了这片水域。

Lamarr Takes on German U-Boats

Lamarr 挑战德国 U 型潜艇

In 1940, Hedy was distraught by the news coming out of Europe, where the Nazi war machine was steadily gaining territory and German U-boat submarines were wreaking havoc in the Atlantic. This was a far more difficult problem to fix, but Hedy was determined to do her part in the war effort.

1940 年,来自欧洲的消息让 Hedy 心烦意乱,纳粹战争机器正在稳步占领领土,德国 U 型潜艇在大西洋上肆虐。这是一个更难解决的问题,但 Hedy 决心在战争中尽自己的一份力量。

The turning point came when Hedy met a man at a dinner party. George Antheil was an avante-garde music composer who lost his brother in the earliest days of the war. Antheil and Hedy were kindred spirits—two brilliant, if unconventional minds dead set on finding a way to defeat Hitler. But how?

转折点出现在海蒂在一次晚宴上遇到一个男人。乔治·安泰尔 (George Antheil) 是一位前卫音乐作曲家,他在战争初期失去了他的兄弟。Antheil 和 Hedy 志同道合——两个才华横溢但又不拘一格的头脑,一心想找到打败希特勒的方法。但是怎么做呢?

That’s when Rhodes thinks Hedy leaned on the knowledge she picked up years earlier during those boring client dinners with her first husband in Vienna.

那时,Rhodes 认为 Hedy 依靠的是她多年前在维也纳与第一任丈夫进行无聊的客户晚宴时学到的知识。

“She knew about torpedoes,” says Rhodes. “She knew there was a problem aiming torpedoes. If the British could take out German submarines with torpedoes launched from surface ships or airplanes, they might be able to prevent all of this slaughter that was going on.”

“她知道鱼雷,”罗兹说。“她知道瞄准鱼雷有问题。如果英国人能用水面舰艇或飞机发射的鱼雷消灭德国潜艇,他们也许就能阻止正在进行的所有屠杀。

The answer was clearly some type of radio-controlled torpedo, but how would they stop the Germans from simply jamming the radio signal? Hedy and Antheil’s creative solution was inspired, Rhodes believes, by their mutual love of the piano.

答案显然是某种无线电控制鱼雷,但他们如何阻止德国人简单地干扰无线电信号呢?Rhodes 认为,Hedy 和 Antheil 的创造性解决方案是受到他们对钢琴的共同热爱的启发。

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George Antheil (1900-1959) was an American composer and pianist who collaborated with Hedy Lamarr to develop the technology of frequency hopping during WWII.

乔治·安泰尔 (1900-1959) 是一位美国作曲家和钢琴家,他在二战期间与海蒂·拉玛合作开发了跳频技术。

Bettmann / Contributor/Getty Images

Lamarr, Antheil Harness Music to Inspire Invention

Lamarr, Antheil 利用音乐激发发明

During their late-night brainstorming sessions, Hedy and Antheil played a musical game. They’d sit down at the piano together, one person would start playing a popular song and the other would see how quickly they could recognize it and start playing along.

在深夜的头脑风暴会议中,Hedy 和 Antheil 玩了一个音乐游戏。他们一起坐在钢琴前,一个人开始弹奏一首流行歌曲,另一个人看到他们能多快认出它并开始跟着弹奏。

It was here, Rhodes thinks, that Hedy and Antheil first happened upon the idea of frequency hopping. If two musicians are playing the same music, they can hop around the keyboard together in perfect sync. However, if someone listening doesn’t know the song, they have no idea what keys will be pressed next. The “signal,” in other words, was hidden in the constantly changing frequencies.

Rhodes 认为,正是在这里,Hedy 和 Antheil 第一次想到了跳频的想法。如果两个音乐家正在演奏相同的音乐,他们可以一起在键盘上完美同步地跳动。但是,如果听的人不知道这首歌,他们就不知道接下来会按下什么键。换句话说,“信号”隐藏在不断变化的频率中。

How did this apply to radio-controlled torpedoes? The Germans could easily jam a single radio frequency, but not a constantly changing “symphony” of frequencies.

这如何应用于无线电控制鱼雷?德国人可以很容易地干扰单个无线电频率,但不能干扰不断变化的频率“交响乐”。

In his experimental musical compositions, Antheil had written songs for multiple synchronized player pianos. The pianos played in sync because they were fed the same piano rolls—a type of primitive, cut-out paper program—that controlled which keys were played and when. What if he and Hedy could invent a similar method for synchronizing communications between a torpedo and its controller on a nearby ship?

在他的实验音乐作品中,Antheil 为多架同步演奏钢琴创作了歌曲。钢琴同步演奏,因为它们被送入相同的钢琴卷帘——一种原始的、剪纸的纸程序——控制弹奏哪些琴键以及何时弹奏。如果他和 Hedy 能够发明一种类似的方法来同步鱼雷和附近船只上的控制器之间的通信,那会怎样?

“All you need are two synchronized clocks that start a tape going at the same moment on the ship and inside the torpedo,” says Rhodes. “The signal between the ship and the torpedo would be continuous, even though it was traveling across a new frequency every split second. The effect for anyone trying to jam the signal is that they wouldn’t know where it was from one moment to the next, because it would ‘hopping’ all over the radio.”

“你所需要的只是两个同步的时钟,它们在船上和鱼雷内部的同一时刻启动磁带,”Rhodes 说。“舰船和鱼雷之间的信号将是连续的,即使它每瞬间都在一个新的频率上传播。对于任何试图干扰信号的人来说,效果是他们不知道它从这一刻到下一刻在哪里,因为它会在无线电中’跳跃’。

It was Hedy who named their clever system “frequency hopping.”

Hedy 将他们巧妙的系统命名为“跳频”。

Navy Rejects Invention

海军拒绝发明 .

The 1942 patent for a method of using “frequency-hopping” to create a jam-proof radio-guided torpedo. The U.S. Navy classified the patent as top secret and locked it away.

1942 年获得专利,发明了一种使用“跳频”制造防干扰无线电制导鱼雷的方法。美国海军将这项专利归类为绝密并将其锁起来。

U.S. Patent Office
美国专利局

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Hedy and Antheil developed their idea with the help of a wartime agency called the National Inventors’ Council, tasked with applying civilian inventions to the war effort. The Council connected Hedy and Antheil with a physicist from the California Institute of Technology who figured out the complex electronics to make it all work.

Hedy 和 Antheil 在一个名为国家发明家委员会的战时机构的帮助下提出了他们的想法,该机构的任务是将民用发明应用于战争努力。委员会将 Hedy 和 Antheil 与加州理工学院的一位物理学家联系起来,后者找出了复杂的电子元件,使这一切正常工作。

When their frequency hopping patent was finalized in 1942, Antheil pitched the idea to the U.S. Navy, which was less than receptive.

当他们的跳频专利于 1942 年最终确定时,Antheil 向美国海军提出了这个想法,但美国海军并未接受。

“What do you want to do, put a player piano in a torpedo? Get out of here!” is how Rhodes describes the Navy’s knee-jerk rejection. It was never given a chance.

“你想做什么,把一架自动演奏钢琴放进鱼雷里?滚出去!“罗兹这样描述海军下意识的拒绝。它从来没有机会。

Hedy and Antheil’s patent was locked in a safe and labeled “top secret” for the remainder of the war. The two entertainers went back to their day jobs, thinking that was the end of their inventing days. Little did they know that their patent would have a second life.

Hedy 和 Antheil 的专利被锁在一个保险箱里,并在战争的剩余时间里被贴上“绝密”的标签。这两位艺人回到了他们的日常工作中,认为这就是他们发明时代的结束。他们几乎不知道他们的专利将获得第二次生命。

Frequency Hopping Tech Takes Off

跳频技术起飞

In the 1950s, the electrical manufacturer Sylvania employed frequency hopping to build a secure system for communicating with submarines. And in the early 1960s, the technology was deployed on U.S. warships to prevent Soviet signal jamming during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

在 1950 年代,电气制造商 Sylvania 采用跳频来构建一个与潜艇通信的安全系统。在 1960 年代初期,该技术被部署在美国军舰上,以防止在古巴导弹危机期间受到苏联信号干扰。

Antheil died in 1959, but Hedy lived on, unaware that her ingenious idea was about to take off in a big way.

Antheil 于 1959 年去世,但 Hedy 活了下来,她不知道她的天才想法即将大放异彩。

When car phones first became popular in the 1970s, carriers used frequency hopping to enable hundreds of callers to share a limited spectrum of radio frequencies. The same technology was rolled out for the earliest cell phone networks.

当车载电话在 1970 年代首次流行时,运营商使用跳频使数百名呼叫者能够共享有限的无线电频率频谱。最早的手机网络也采用了相同的技术。

By the 1990s, frequency hopping was so ubiquitous that it became the technology standard required by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for secure radio communications. That’s why Bluetooth and other essential technologies are based, at their core, on an idea dreamed up by Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil.

到 1990 年代,跳频无处不在,以至于它成为美国联邦通信委员会 (FCC) 要求的安全无线电通信的技术标准。这就是为什么蓝牙和其他基本技术的核心是基于 Hedy Lamarr 和 George Antheil 的梦想。

“It’s a really deep and fundamental idea,” says Rhodes. “It has broad applications all over the place.”

“这是一个非常深刻和基本的想法,”Rhodes 说。“它到处都有广泛的应用。”

Over time, Hedy’s Hollywood star fizzled and she retired to Florida, where she continued to tinker with new inventions, including a more “driver-friendly” type of traffic light. It wasn’t until Hedy was in her 80s that a group of engineers realized that the “Hedwig Kiesler Mackay” listed on the frequency hopping patent was none other than the Hollywood legend, Hedy Lamarr.

随着时间的推移,Hedy 的好莱坞明星逐渐衰落,她退休后去了佛罗里达州,在那里她继续研究新发明,包括更“对驾驶员友好”的交通信号灯。直到 80 多岁的 Hedy 才意识到,跳频专利上列出的“Hedwig Kiesler Mackay”正是好莱坞传奇人物 Hedy Lamarr。

“Hedy didn’t want money, but she did want recognition,” says Rhodes, “and it really angered her that nobody gave her credit for this important invention. In the 1990s, she finally got an award for her contribution. And Hedy being Hedy, what did she say? ‘Well, it’s about time.’”

“海蒂不想要钱,但她确实想要认可,”罗兹说,“没有人为她的这项重要发明给予赞扬,这真的让她很生气。在 1990 年代,她终于因其贡献而获得了奖项。Hedy 就是 Hedy,她说了什么?'嗯,是时候了。


How Hollywood Screen Siren Hedy Lamarr Helped Pioneer WiFi and GPS

好莱坞银幕女神海蒂·拉玛帮助开创了 WiFi 和 GPS

By: Michelle Konstantinovsky

Hedy Lamarr, shown here in a publicity still for the 1940 film “Comrade X,” was also a brilliant inventor. MGM/Clarence Bull/Wikimedia Commons/HowStuffWorks

“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”
“任何女孩都可以很迷人。你所要做的就是站着不动,看起来很愚蠢。

In two short sentences, famed actress Hedy Lamarr managed to call gender stereotypes, beauty ideals and Hollywood artifice into question, using a hint of humor to make meaningful social commentary. In a sense, this succinct soundbite offers more insight into Lamarr’s life and legacy than any headshot or publicity photo ever could, but understanding the context of the film star’s words provides even more meaning to the boundary-breaking successes and unexpected influence she continues to have, two decades after her death.

著名女演员海蒂·拉玛 (Hedy Lamarr) 用短短的两句话,成功地对性别刻板印象、美丽理想和好莱坞的技巧提出了质疑,用一丝幽默来做出有意义的社会评论。从某种意义上说,这个简洁的原声片段比任何头像或宣传照片都更能深入了解拉马尔的生平和遗产,但理解这位电影明星话语的背景为她在去世二十年后继续拥有的突破性成功和意想不到的影响力提供了更多意义。

Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler Nov. 9, 1914, the Austria native took an early interest in the performing arts, but seemed equally enchanted with science and engineering. “Hedy Lamarr grew up in a wealthy middle-class family in Vienna where she learned classical piano and enjoyed ballet, opera and chemistry,” says Alexandra Dean, director of the documentary, “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story,” via email. “She loved tinkering with her gadgets and took apart her music box and smashed a light bulb to see how it worked.”

这位奥地利人于 1914 年 11 月 9 日出生于 Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler,很早就对表演艺术产生了兴趣,但似乎同样对科学和工程着迷。“海蒂·拉马尔在维也纳一个富裕的中产阶级家庭长大,在那里她学习了古典钢琴,喜欢芭蕾舞、歌剧和化学,”纪录片《重磅炸弹:海蒂·拉马尔的故事》的导演亚历山德拉·迪恩 (Alexandra Dean) 通过电子邮件说。她喜欢摆弄她的小玩意儿,拆开她的音乐盒,砸碎一个灯泡,看看它是如何工作的。

By the time she was a teenager, Lamarr was turning heads for her stunning physical beauty — something that would both serve her and arguably hinder her success. “She became an actress because she thought it would be more fun than school, so she forged a note from her mother allowing her 10 hours away from classes and she went to her first audition,” Dean says. At 17 years old, Lamarr scored her first film role in a German project called “Geld auf der Strase.” She continued acting in European productions and in 1932, landed a controversial role in the scandalous-for-the-era film, “Exstase.”
到十几岁时,Lamarr 就因其令人惊叹的外表美而备受瞩目——这既对她有益,也可以说阻碍了她的成功。“她成为一名演员是因为她认为这比学校更有趣,所以她伪造了一张她妈妈的便条,允许她放课 10 小时,然后她去参加了她的第一次试镜,”迪恩说。17 岁时,Lamarr 在一个名为“Geld auf der Strase”的德国项目中获得了她的第一个电影角色。她继续在欧洲作品中演出,并于 1932 年在那个时代的丑闻电影“Exstase”中扮演了一个有争议的角色。

“She was too beautiful for her own good,” Vincent Brook, author and UCLA media studies lecturer, says via email. “Her glamour queen, sex goddess persona kept her from being seen for the brilliant, complex person that she was.”
“她太漂亮了,对她自己有好处,”作家、加州大学洛杉矶分校媒体研究讲师文森特·布鲁克(Vincent Brook)在电子邮件中说。“她的魅力女王、性爱女神的角色使她无法被看到她是一个聪明、复杂的人。”

Hedy Lamarr starred in 1944’s “The Heavenly Body.”

Wikimedia Commons

Lamarr wed Austrian munitions dealer, Fritz Mandl, in 1933, but the marriage didn’t last long. She later said of the union, “I knew very soon that I could never be an actress while I was his wife…He was the absolute monarch in his marriage…I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded — and imprisoned — having no mind, no life of its own.” During their marriage, Lamarr was often spotted on Mandl’s arm as he kept company with friends and business partners, many of whom had alleged ties to the Nazi party.

Lamarr 于 1933 年与奥地利军火商 Fritz Mandl 结婚,但这段婚姻并没有持续多久。她后来谈到这段婚姻时说:“我很快就知道,当我是他的妻子时,我永远不可能成为一名演员…他是他婚姻中的绝对君主…我就像个洋娃娃。我就像一个东西,一些必须被守护和囚禁的艺术品,没有思想,没有自己的生命。在他们的婚姻期间,拉马尔经常被发现在曼德尔的手臂上,因为他与朋友和商业伙伴在一起,其中许多人据称与纳粹党有联系。

By 1937, Lamarr had had enough and fled her marriage, her former life and all ties to Austria. She headed to London, and soon signed a contract with Hollywood’s Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio under the name Hedy Lamarr. Her first American film, “Algiers,” kicked her career into high gear, and soon Lamarr was a household name.

到 1937 年,拉马尔已经受够了,逃离了她的婚姻、她以前的生活以及与奥地利的所有联系。她前往伦敦,并很快以 Hedy Lamarr 的名义与好莱坞的 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 工作室签订了一份合同。她的第一部美国电影《阿尔及尔》(Algiers)使她的事业进入了高潮,很快拉马尔就成为家喻户晓的名字。

“The sexist double-standard was reversed for Lamarr in other ways,” Brook says. “Compared to German-accented male actors in Hollywood, who were relegated in the 1940s to supporting roles, mostly as Nazis, she and Marlene Dietrich, given their exotic/erotic allure, retained their marquee value.”
“性别歧视的双重标准在其他方面对拉马尔来说是相反的,”布鲁克说。“与好莱坞的德国口音男演员相比,他们在 1940 年代被降级为配角,主要是纳粹,她和玛琳·黛德丽,鉴于他们的异国情调/色情魅力,保留了他们的大牌价值。”

World War II and Frequency Hopping

第二次世界大战和跳频

In the early years of her newfound fame, Lamarr dated some of Hollywood’s most famous and infamous men, including Howard Hughes. The pilot and businessman reportedly took Lamarr along to tour airplane factories and asked for Lamarr’s input on aviation design and theory. But it wasn’t until 1942 that Lamarr’s innovative thinking inspired an unprecedented invention. In collaboration with composer George Antheil, Lamarr came up with an electronic device that minimized the jamming of radio signals.

在她新成名的早年,拉玛与好莱坞一些最著名和最臭名昭著的男人约会,包括霍华德休斯。据报道,这位飞行员和商人带 Lamarr 参观了飞机工厂,并询问 Lamarr 对航空设计和理论的意见。但直到 1942 年,Lamarr 的创新思维才激发了一项前所未有的发明。在与作曲家 George Antheil 的合作中,Lamarr 想出了一种可以最大限度地减少无线电信号干扰的电子设备。

“During World War II, Hedy’s mother was trapped in Vienna, and since she was Jewish, she was in great danger,” Dean says. “Hedy already lived in Hollywood and was helping her mother escape to America. She got as far as London but it was not safe to cross the Atlantic because every American ship was getting blown up by the Nazis. Hedy was terrified her mother would die in the London Blitz and so every night she worked on inventing a remote controlled torpedo so advanced it would be able to hunt down and blow up every Nazi submarine in the Atlantic thus securing safe passage to the U.S. To make sure the Nazis couldn’t hack the radio signal for her torpedo (and send it back to blow up the Allied ship that launched it), she created a ‘secret communication system’ that couldn’t be hacked.”

“二战期间,Hedy 的母亲被困在维也纳,由于她是犹太人,她处于极大的危险之中,”Dean 说。“海蒂已经住在好莱坞,正在帮助她的母亲逃到美国。她最远到达了伦敦,但穿越大西洋并不安全,因为每艘美国船只都被纳粹炸毁。海蒂害怕她的母亲会在伦敦闪电战中丧生,因此她每天晚上都致力于发明一种遥控鱼雷,这种鱼雷非常先进,能够追捕和炸毁大西洋上的每一艘纳粹潜艇,从而确保安全前往美国。为了确保纳粹无法破解她的鱼雷的无线电信号(并将其送回以炸毁发射鱼雷的盟军船只),她创建了一个无法被黑客入侵的’秘密通信系统’。

The “secret communications system,” utilized changing radio frequencies to prevent enemies from decoding messages. Multiple radio frequencies were used to broadcast a radio signal, which changed frequencies at split-second intervals in an apparently random manner. To anyone listening, it would just sound like noise. But the signal would be clear if both the sender and receiver hopped frequencies at the same time. (The patent was filed under Lamarr’s married name at the time Hedy Kiesler Markey.)

“秘密通信系统”利用改变无线电频率来防止敌人解码信息。多个无线电频率被用来广播无线电信号,无线电信号以明显的随机方式在瞬间改变频率。对于任何听的人来说,它听起来都像噪音。但是,如果发送方和接收方同时跳频,则信号会很清楚。(该专利是以 Lamarr 当时的 Hedy Kiesler Markey 的婚名申请的。

“She claimed that her prime motivation for seeking to aid the U.S. military in World War II was to help her mother who was trapped in Europe,” Brook says. “Might it not also have been a form of atonement, for her marriage in the 1930s to a weapons manufacturer for the Third Reich?”

“她声称,她寻求在二战中帮助美国军队的主要动机是帮助她被困在欧洲的母亲,”布鲁克说。“这难道不也是一种赎罪形式,因为她在 1930 年代嫁给了第三帝国的一家武器制造商吗?”

Although the technology was never used in wartime, it wound up playing a critical role in communication methods throughout the decades. “She gave the patent for that invention to the U.S. Navy and it was first used during the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Dean says. Many believe that Lamarr’s invention made technology like WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth, as well as devices like cellphones, possible.

尽管该技术从未在战时使用,但它最终在几十年的通信方式中发挥了关键作用。“她将这项发明的专利交给了美国海军,并在古巴导弹危机期间首次使用,”Dean 说。许多人认为,拉马尔的发明使 WiFi、GPS 和蓝牙等技术以及手机等设备成为可能。

“The frequency-hopping technology she pioneered is ironic, given her own inability to make the leap from pin-up girl to respected engineering genius,” Brook says.

“她开创的跳频技术具有讽刺意味,因为她自己无法从海报女郎一跃成为受人尊敬的工程天才,”Brook 说。

Too Outlandish to Be True

太古怪了,难以置信

The U.S. Navy chose not to implement Lamarr’s system, and although it was eventually put into action nearly two decades later, her patent had expired, meaning Lamarr never received a penny for her invention.

美国海军选择不实施 Lamarr 的系统,尽管它最终在近二十年后付诸实施,但她的专利已经过期,这意味着 Lamarr 从未因她的发明而获得一分钱。

“Even though many inventors and scientists had heard the rumor that one of Hollywood’s most glamorous stars had invented a secret communication system, most of them thought it was an urban legend and told me so,” Dean says. “Hedy had never told her story to the public before, and most people who heard it dismissed it as too outlandish to be true. Robert Price, the top historian of secret communications, was the only scientist to ask Hedy directly if she came up with the invention, but when she told him that she did he thought it was a lie and didn’t record her answer in his history of the invention. Instead he told everyone she was a spy who stole the invention from the Nazis.”

“尽管许多发明家和科学家都听说过好莱坞最迷人的明星之一发明了秘密通信系统的传言,但他们中的大多数人都认为这是一个都市传说,并告诉我,”Dean 说。“海蒂以前从未向公众讲述过她的故事,大多数听到它的人都认为它太古怪了,不可能是真的。顶级秘密通信历史学家罗伯特·普莱斯 (Robert Price) 是唯一一位直接询问海蒂是否想出这项发明的科学家,但当她告诉他她想出时,他认为这是谎言,没有在他的发明历史中记录她的答案。相反,他告诉大家她是间谍,从纳粹那里偷走了发明。

While she wasn’t able to achieve critical acclaim or recognition for her technical aptitude, Lamarr continued to see success in Hollywood. But her career began to decline in the 1950s, and subsequently experienced strife in her personal life, through six marriages, two arrests, and a host of substance abuse issues.

虽然她的技术能力未能获得评论界的赞誉或认可,但 Lamarr 继续在好莱坞取得成功。但她的事业在 1950 年代开始走下坡路,随后在她的个人生活中经历了冲突,经历了六次婚姻、两次被捕和一系列药物滥用问题。

Well after her retirement and her retreat from the spotlight however, Lamarr finally received acknowledgement for her achievements off-screen. In 1997, the Electronic Frontier Foundation jointly awarded Lamarr and Antheil with their Pioneer Award in 1997, and Lamarr also became the first woman to receive the Invention Convention’s Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award. For her invention, Lamarr was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

然而,在她退休并退出聚光灯之后,Lamarr 终于因其在银幕外的成就而获得了认可。1997 年,电子前沿基金会共同授予 Lamarr 和 Antheil 先锋奖,1997 年,Lamarr 也成为第一位获得发明大会 Bulbie Gnass 成就精神奖的女性。由于她的发明,Lamarr 于 2014 年被追授入选国家发明家名人堂。

Although Lamarr died in 2000, her legacy has lived on through film and the belated recognition of her technological contributions. And according to Dean, she was so much more than the silver screen star who turned heads and attracted audiences. “When I first listened to Hedy’s voice on tape, I was bowled over by her sense of humor!” Dean says. "She is so funny and quirky. The first thing she said on the tape was, ‘I think I’ll be able to control people after my death’ and sometimes I think she meant to scare whomever listened to the tape and set out to tell her story! I was tickled by that idea.

尽管 Lamarr 于 2000 年去世,但她的遗产通过电影和对她技术贡献的迟来的认可而得以延续。根据 Dean 的说法,她不仅仅是那个吸引眼球并吸引观众的银幕明星。“当我第一次在磁带上听到 Hedy 的声音时,我被她的幽默感所震撼!”Dean 说。“她太有趣了,太古怪了。她在录音带上说的第一句话是,‘我想我死后能控制人’,有时我觉得她的意思是吓唬听录音带的人,然后开始讲述她的故事!我被这个想法逗乐了。

“She also said she knew what she’d done in her life; she didn’t need anyone to believe her. I loved that sense that she alone could give herself that recognition for her gargantuan achievement.”

“她还说她知道自己这辈子做了什么; 她不需要任何人相信她。我喜欢那种感觉,只有她才能为自己的巨大成就给予这种认可。

Now That’s Cool

Lamarr was so much more than her looks, but her physical beauty did inspire a few iconic pieces of pop culture that continue to endure today: She was the model for Disney’s Snow White and the inspiration for DC Comics’ Catwoman.

拉玛不仅仅是她的外表,但她的外表美确实激发了流行文化的一些标志性作品,这些作品至今仍在延续:她是迪士尼白雪公主的模特,也是 DC 漫画猫女的灵感来源。


Random Paths to Frequency Hopping

跳频的随机路径

By Tony Rothman

Actress Hedy Lamarr famously co-patented a widely used secure communication technology, but popular accounts overlook many predecessors.

著名女演员海蒂·拉玛(Hedy Lamarr)共同拥有了一项被广泛使用的安全通信技术专利,但大众的叙述往往忽略了众多的先驱者。

This Article From Issue

January-February 2019

Volume 107, Number 1

Page 46

DOI: 10.1511/2019.107.1.46

In an age when we ought to know better, the public perception of the evolution of science and technology retains the flavor of old just-so stories. In these tales, great discoveries or inventions are typically made by a single person.

在本应更加明智的时代,大众对科学技术发展的认知仍带有旧式“想当然故事”的味道。在这些故事里,伟大的发现或发明通常是由一个人完成的。

The hero, often an outsider working in splendid isolation, experiences a cinematic eureka moment when everything becomes blindingly clear. History is forever altered, and on we go until the next pivotal genius appears.

故事的主角通常是与世隔绝的局外人,他们在某个瞬间灵光乍现,仿佛电影情节一般,一切变得清晰明了。从此,历史被永远改变,直到下一个关键性天才的出现。

The truth is generally the opposite: Those who work in science and technology see that ideas are not unique; every conceivable approach to an outstanding problem is attempted by the community; contributions flow from every quarter; progress takes place incrementally; and multiple researchers inevitably hit on the same idea, producing discoveries that are simultaneous or nearly so. Assignment of credit is rarely clear-cut or generously inclusive. The old adage that “every discovery is named for the last person who discovered it” strikes closer to the mark than we might like to admit. Who receives acclaim depends, too, on whose story serves political interests, fits a convenient cultural narrative, or simply registers as sufficiently sensational.

然而,事实往往相反:在科学技术领域工作的人们知道,想法并非独一无二。对于一个突出的问题,人们尝试了所有可能的解决办法;各方都做出了贡献;进步是逐步实现的;而且多个研究者不可避免地会想到相同的想法,从而产生同时或近乎同时的发现。对功劳的认定很少是明确无误或慷慨包容的。“每个发现都以最后一个发现它的人的名字命名”这句老话,比我们愿意承认的更接近事实。谁获得赞誉还取决于谁的故事符合政治利益、契合某种便利的文化叙事,或者仅仅足够引人注目。

An archetypical case is the invention of radio. To American—and Italian—schoolchildren, Guglielmo Marconi was the responsible party. In England, Oliver Lodge is accorded precedence; in Russia, Alexander Stepanovich Popov; in India, Jagidish Chandra Bose. In New Zealand, credit mostly goes to Ernest Rutherford. None of these answers is wrong, exactly, but neither is any one of them exclusively right. All of these inventors created comparable devices within about a year of 1894.

一个典型的例子是无线电的发明。在美国和意大利的学校里,人们认为古列尔莫·马可尼(Guglielmo Marconi)是发明者。在英国,奥利弗·洛奇(Oliver Lodge)被认为居先;在俄罗斯,是亚历山大·斯捷潘诺维奇·波波夫(Alexander Stepanovich Popov);在印度,是贾格迪什·钱德拉·玻色(Jagidish Chandra Bose)。在新西兰,主要归功于欧内斯特·卢瑟福(Ernest Rutherford)。这些说法都不算错,但也没有哪一个是绝对正确的。这些发明者都在 1894 年左右的约一年内创造了类似的装置。

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Actress Hedy Lamarr (bottom) and composer George Antheil (top left) patented a form of frequency hopping for secure communication. Popular articles have spread awareness of their efforts but have tended to overlook many other important contributors, from cryptographer Gilbert Vernam (top) to Bluetooth inventor Jaap Haartsen (middle right).
 
著名女演员海蒂·拉玛(底部)和作曲家乔治·安泰尔(左上)为安全通信申请了一种频率跳变专利。有关他们努力的报道提高了公众对这一成果的认知,但往往忽略了其他许多重要贡献者,从密码学家吉尔伯特·维纳姆(顶部)到蓝牙发明者雅普·哈滕森(右中)。
 
Illustration Barbara Aulicino; Images: ahistoryblog.com/Bruce Ware Allen; © Union européenne 2012/EC Service Audiovisuel/Christoph Boeckheler; U.S. Patent Office; Pictorial Press LtD/Alamy 插图作者:芭芭拉·奥利奇诺;图片来自:ahistoryblog.com/布鲁斯·韦尔·艾伦;©欧洲联盟 2012/欧盟视听服务/克里斯托夫·博克勒;美国专利局;Pictorial Press LtD/Alamy

Recently, attempts to address historical slights have lapsed instead into another kind of just-so story. Over the past two decades it has become standard, even fashionable, to credit the invention of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and even cell phones to 1940s movie star Hedy Lamarr. The story is appealing and exotic: Lamarr, an intelligent woman and amateur inventor, was shoehorned into a Hollywood culture that valued her as a screen siren and nothing more. Since a Google doodle was devoted to the actress in 2015 and Bombshell, a documentary about her, was released in 2017, the popular history has become chiseled in marble—well, let us say, arrayed in bits.

近来,试图纠正历史偏见的努力反而陷入了一种新的“想当然故事”。在过去的二十年里,将 Wi-Fi、蓝牙甚至手机的发明归功于 20 世纪 40 年代的电影明星海蒂·拉玛,已经成为一种标准,甚至是时髦的说法。这个故事既吸引人又充满异国情调:拉玛是一位聪慧的女性和业余发明家,却被硬塞进了一个只把她当作银幕美女而不看重其他才能的好莱坞文化。自从 2015 年谷歌为这位女演员制作了涂鸦,以及 2017 年关于她的纪录片《爆炸性新闻》(Bombshell)上映以来,这一流行的历史说法已经变得像刻在大理石上一样——好吧,我们姑且说,像以比特的形式呈现出来。

It is true that Lamarr and her unlikely partner, the radical modernist composer George Antheil, hold a patent for an important radio-transmission method that finds its way into several modern communications technologies, including Bluetooth. But it is equally true that their patent was hardly the first in this area. It is further true that the earliest operational systems employing this technique were created after World War II independently of their patent, and the essential idea can be traced back nearly to the birth of radio itself. If Lamarr and Antheil’s attorneys had performed a more diligent patent search, different doodles might well have graced Google.

确实,拉玛和她不太可能的合作伙伴、激进的现代主义作曲家乔治·安泰尔拥有一项重要的无线电传输方法专利,这种方法被应用在包括蓝牙在内的几种现代通信技术中。但同样真实的是,他们的专利绝非该领域的第一个。此外,最早使用这种技术的操作系统是在第二次世界大战后独立于他们的专利而创造的,而这一基本思想几乎可以追溯到无线电诞生之初。如果拉玛和安泰尔的律师进行了更仔细的专利搜索,出现在谷歌上的可能就是不同的涂鸦了。

The Actress and the Composer

女演员与作曲家

The tale of Hedy and George might have been written by Arthur Conan Doyle, or even Graham Greene. Briefly: At an early age Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Kiesler in Austria, married Fritz Mandl, a Nazi sympathizer and Austria’s leading munitions manufacturer on the eve of World War II. Lamarr escaped this unhappy union (as she tells it, disguised as a maid whom she had drugged) and soon after ended up in Hollywood. Through a mutual interest in the obscure field of applied endocrinology, she met George Antheil. Revealing that she possessed a flair for inventing weapons, Hedy shared with him an idea for a secure torpedo guidance system that employed a novel technique known as frequency hopping.

海蒂和乔治的故事或许可以由阿瑟·柯南·道尔,甚至格雷厄姆·格林来撰写。简单来说:出生于奥地利的海蒂·拉玛(原名赫德维希·基斯勒)在年轻时嫁给弗里茨·曼德尔,一个纳粹同情者,也是第二次世界大战前夕奥地利的主要军火商。拉玛逃离了这段不幸的婚姻(据她自己说,她伪装成一名被她下药的女仆)并很快来到好莱坞。由于对应用内分泌学这一冷门领域的共同兴趣,她结识了乔治·安泰尔。她向他透露了自己在发明武器方面的天赋,并与他分享了一种采用名为“频率跳变”的新技术的安全鱼雷制导系统的想法。

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In frequency hopping, a source signal is sampled at short time intervals; each interval is modulated with a different frequency that is selected using a pseudorandom number generator (left). The unpredictable hops in frequency (center) make the message difficult to intercept and allow the transmission of overlapping channels. The receiver (right) reverses the randomly generated frequency shifts, using synchronization signals exchanged with the transmitter, and retrieves the original signal.
 
在频率跳变中,源信号在短时间内被采样;每个间隔被用一个不同的频率调制,这个频率是通过伪随机数生成器()选出的。频率的不可预测跳变()使信息难以被截获,并允许重叠信道的传输。接收器()通过与发射器交换的同步信号,反转随机生成的频率变化,从而恢复原始信号。
 
Illustration by Barbara Aulicino; Information provided by Glenn Babecki. 插图作者:芭芭拉·奥利奇诺;信息提供者:格伦·贝贝基

Frequency hopping is the simplest version of a radio transmission technique today known as spread-spectrum technique, which refers to any method that widens the frequency band of a signal. Normally, radio stations broadcast on a single carrier frequency, which makes eavesdropping deliberately easy: You tune your radio to the correct frequency and receive the programming. By contrast, frequency hopping prevents the interception and decipherment of a transmission by shifting the carrier frequency in a predetermined, usually pseudorandom fashion—in other words, in a way that appears random but is produced by a deterministic algorithm. A receiver hopping around in synchrony with the transmitter can pick up the message, but an eavesdropper tuned to a single frequency will hear only a blip as that bit of message flashes by. Frequency hopping is largely jam-proof as well. If the frequencies are spaced widely enough, any jamming signal will interfere with only a small part of the message.

频率跳变是当今被称为“扩频技术”的无线电传输技术的最简单版本,这种技术指的是任何拓宽信号频带的方法。通常,广播电台在单一载波频率上进行广播,这使得窃听变得轻而易举:你只需将收音机调到正确的频率,就能收到节目。相比之下,频率跳变通过以预定的、通常是伪随机的方式改变载波频率,从而防止传输被截获和破译——换句话说,这种方式看似随机,但却是由确定性算法产生的。与发射器同步跳变的接收器可以接收信息,但调到单一频率的窃听者只会听到信息闪现时的一声嘀嗒。频率跳变在很大程度上也是抗干扰的。如果频率间隔足够大,任何干扰信号只会干扰到信息的一小部分。

Trained as an actress, Hedy lacked the technical expertise to put her idea into practice. George was likewise no engineer, but two decades earlier he had written a concert piece, the notorious Ballet Mécanique, which included parts for synchronized player pianos. That background instantly triggered a thought: He would place a player-piano roll punched with 88 rows of randomly placed perforations in the transmitter to control the hopping among 88 radio frequencies; he would place an identical roll in the receiver; and then he would synchronize the two. Why 88? That’s the number of keys on a piano.

作为一名受过演员训练的人,海蒂缺乏将她的想法付诸实践的技术专长。乔治也不是工程师,但二十年前他创作了一部音乐会作品,臭名昭著的《机械芭蕾》,其中包含了同步钢琴演奏的部分。这一背景立刻触发了一个想法:他会在发射器中放置一个带有 88 行随机排列的孔的钢琴演奏纸卷,以控制在 88 个无线电频率之间的跳变;他会在接收器中放置一个相同的纸卷;然后将两者同步。为什么是 88?这是钢琴键的数量。

An invention notebook in George’s handwriting reveals that he was influenced by Philco’s 1939 Mystery Control, the first commercially available radio remote controller. With the help of Samuel Mackeown, a California Institute of Technology engineer, George ironed out the bugs in their invention, and he and Hedy applied for a patent in June 1941. Considering the familiarity with patent conventions and technical radio concepts on display, it seems likely that Mackeown wrote the patent itself. On August 11, 1942, Lamarr and Antheil received U.S. Patent 2,292,387 (issued to Lamarr under her married name, Hedy Markey) for a “secret communication system.”

乔治的手写发明笔记本显示,他受到了 Philco 1939 年推出的 Mystery Control(第一个商业化的无线电遥控器)的影响。在加州理工学院工程师塞缪尔·麦考恩的帮助下,乔治解决了他们发明中的问题,他和海蒂于 1941 年 6 月申请了专利。鉴于专利中展现出的对专利惯例和技术无线电概念的熟悉程度,似乎很可能是麦考恩撰写了专利本身。1942 年 8 月 11 日,拉玛和安泰尔获得了美国专利 2,292,387(以拉玛的婚名海蒂·马基颁发)的“秘密通信系统”。

Despite the novelty of their approach, the pneumatic player-piano mechanism made their system unwieldy—and certainly unworkable in battle. Antheil made strenuous lobbying efforts to get the invention adopted by the Navy, but it was shelved. According to George, the Navy brass thought he wanted to put a player piano in a torpedo. Nevertheless, one frequently encounters claims (for instance, in Richard Rhodes’s 2011 book Hedy’s Folly) that because of its military potential, the Lamarr-Antheil patent was classified by the Navy. Although it adds to the story’s drama, that detail does not appear to be true.

尽管他们的方法具有新颖性,但气动钢琴演奏机制使他们的系统笨重不堪——而且肯定无法用于战斗。安泰尔努力游说海军采用这项发明,但最终被搁置。据乔治说,海军将领以为他想在鱼雷里放一架钢琴。然而,人们经常看到这样的说法(例如在理查德·罗德斯 2011 年的著作《海蒂的愚蠢》中),因为这项发明具有军事潜力,所以拉玛 - 安泰尔专利被海军列为机密。尽管这一细节增加了故事的戏剧性,但似乎并不属实。

The authors of the Spread Spectrum Communications Handbook state that the patent was processed routinely with no imposition of secrecy. A tiny New York Times notice dated October 1, 1941, did report that the National Inventors Council “classed Miss Lamarr’s invention in the ‘red-hot’ category,” but two days later Lamarr and Antheil’s patent attorneys, Lyon and Lyon, wrote a letter (provided to me by Antheil scholar Mauro Piccinini) to their clients making a contrary claim:
《扩频通信手册》的作者们表示,该专利是按常规程序处理的,没有被列为机密。一份日期为 1941 年 10 月 1 日的《纽约时报》小篇幅报道说,国家发明委员会将拉玛的发明归入“热门”类别,但两天后,拉玛和安泰尔的专利律师莱昂和莱昂(由安泰尔学者毛罗·皮奇尼尼提供给我)给他们的客户写了一封信,提出了相反的说法:

We noticed considerable publicity to the papers recently resulting from statements of Col. Lent of the National Inventors Council. This publicity is rather puzzling in view of the fact that the Patent Office has not issued a Secrecy Order. It is also difficult to understand why the Secrecy Order has not been issued in view of the fact that the Examiner has found nothing antedating the invention.
 
我们注意到,最近由于国家发明委员会的伦特上校的言论,报纸上出现了相当多的宣传。鉴于专利局尚未发布保密令,这种宣传令人费解。鉴于审查员没有发现任何早于该发明的东西,也很难理解为什么没有发布保密令。

George himself apparently didn’t believe the invention was classified: He gives the patent number in his 1945 autobiography Bad Boy of Music and is under the impression that anybody can get a copy of the thing by mailing 10 cents to the Patent Office. In addition, in their letter Lyon and Lyon also expressed surprise that “the Patent Office did not discover more pertinent patents than those cited.” That surprise turned out to be well-founded.

乔治自己显然也不认为这项发明被列为机密:他在 1945 年的自传《音乐界的坏孩子》中给出了专利号,并且认为任何人都可以通过向专利局邮寄 10 美分来获得该专利的副本。此外,在他们的信中,莱昂和莱昂还对“专利局没有发现比引用的更相关的专利”表示惊讶。这种惊讶结果是很有根据的。

Claims and counterclaims have been made as to whether Lamarr originated the frequency-hopping scheme or learned of it in meetings at Fritz Mandl’s firm, the Hirtenberger Patronenfabrik. In Bad Boy, George affirms that she got her education at those meetings, and although he is not exactly the world’s most reliable memoirist, he could hardly have received the information from anyone but Hedy. Robert Price, an engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory and a pioneer of spread-spectrum technology, interviewed Lamarr. He told me that he came away convinced that she had heard the idea in her husband’s boardroom, and with tongue somewhat planted in cheek, Price called her “the Mata Hari of World War II.” Still, one must be mindful of historical gender roles—of how Lamarr might have presented herself as well as how her statements might have been received.

关于拉玛是自己想出了频率跳变方案,还是在弗里茨·曼德尔的公司——希尔滕贝格弹药厂的会议上了解到这一方案的,人们众说纷纭。在《音乐界的坏孩子》中,乔治肯定地说她在那些会议上受到了教育,尽管他算不上世界上最可靠的回忆录作者,但他不可能从别人那里得到这些信息。麻省理工学院林肯实验室的工程师、扩频技术的先驱罗伯特·普赖斯采访了拉玛。他告诉我,他离开时确信她在丈夫的董事会上听到了这个想法,普赖斯半开玩笑地称她为“第二次世界大战的玛塔·哈莉”。然而,我们必须注意到历史上的性别角色——拉玛可能如何表现自己,以及她的言论可能如何被接受。

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More than a century separates Nikola Tesla’s frequency-based “method of signaling” from today’s widely used spread-spectrum data transmissions. The researchers and inventions listed here are just highlights of a story that defies simple narratives. Even well-formed concepts often follow convoluted paths to implementation: Roger Easton’s key patent for GPS (“Navigation system using satellites and passive ranging techniques”) was granted a full 45 years ago.
 
从尼古拉·特斯拉基于频率的“信号方法”到如今广泛使用的扩频数据传输,相隔了一个多世纪。这里列出的研究人员和发明只是这个难以简单叙述的故事中的亮点。即使是构思良好的概念,其实施过程也常常是曲折复杂的:罗杰·伊斯顿的全球定位系统(GPS)关键专利(“使用卫星和被动测距技术的导航系统”)是在整整 45 年前获得的。
 
Illustration by Barbara Aulicino. 插图作者:芭芭拉·奥利奇诺

The notion that Lamarr’s patent might have begun with an idea she heard from her former husband’s colleagues is dismissed in the documentary Bombshell, where the filmmakers claim that German engineers at the time were unaware of the technology. However, Hans-Joachim Braun, whose 1997 article in American Heritage of Invention and Technology spurred the current interest in Lamarr’s role as an inventor, informed me that documentary evidence in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg shows that German engineers before World War II were aware of frequency hopping, although they lacked the means to put it into practice.

在纪录片《爆炸性新闻》中,拉玛的专利可能源自她从前丈夫的同事那里听到的想法这一观点被驳回了,制片人声称当时的德国工程师对这项技术一无所知。然而,汉斯 - 约阿希姆·布劳恩在 1997 年发表于《美国发明与技术遗产》上的文章引发了目前对拉玛作为发明家角色的兴趣,他告诉我,弗莱堡联邦军事档案馆的文献证据显示,第二次世界大战之前的德国工程师就知道频率跳变,尽管他们没有将其付诸实践的手段。

Great Minds Think Alike

英雄所见略同

At any rate, Hedy and George were hardly alone. In September 1940—a year before Lamarr and Antheil filed their patent application—Ellison Purington, who had done graduate work in physics at Harvard University and had worked on torpedo guidance systems at the Hammond Laboratory during World War I, filed an application for a “System for Reducing Interference.” In this patent (U.S. Patent 2,294,129), granted in 1942, Purington proposes “wobbling” the carrier frequency to reduce the ability of other transmitters to interfere with the signal. There seems to be no substantial difference between Purington’s frequency wobbling and Lamarr’s frequency hopping, except that frequency-hopping systems hop over a much wider bandwidth than Purington envisioned.

不管怎样,海蒂和乔治并不孤单。1940 年 9 月——比拉玛和安泰尔提交专利申请早一年——埃利森·普林顿提交了一项“减少干扰系统”的申请。普林顿曾在哈佛大学攻读物理学研究生课程,并在第一次世界大战期间在哈蒙德实验室从事鱼雷制导系统的工作。在这项 1942 年获批的专利(美国专利 2,294,129)中,普林顿提出“摆动”载波频率,以减少其他发射器对信号的干扰能力。普林顿的频率摆动与拉玛的频率跳变之间似乎没有什么实质性区别,只是频率跳变系统的跳变带宽比普林顿设想的要宽得多。

Purington’s eureka wasn’t the only one. In January 1943, five months after Lamarr and Antheil received their patent, U.S. Army Signal Corps officer Henry Hutchinson applied for a “speech privacy apparatus” relating to a “means of maintaining secrecy in communication, particularly in telephone circuits.” Like the Lamarr-Antheil patent, Hutchinson’s employed frequency hopping; instead of player-piano rolls, his scheme utilized cryptographic machines to produce a pseudorandom hopping sequence on demand. In this case, the application was held under a secrecy order until 1950, when Hutchinson was awarded U.S. Patent 2,495,727.

普林顿的灵光一现并非仅此一例。1943 年 1 月,就在拉玛和安泰尔获得专利五个月后,美国陆军信号队军官亨利·哈钦森申请了一种“语音保密装置”,该装置涉及一种“在通信中,特别是在电话电路中,保持保密的手段”。与拉玛 - 安泰尔专利一样,哈钦森的专利也采用了频率跳变;不过,他的方案使用密码机器按需产生伪随机跳变序列,而不是使用钢琴演奏纸卷。在这个案例中,该申请确实被列为机密,直到 1950 年哈钦森获得美国专利 2,495,727。

In an unusually noble act for the time, Hutchinson listed a dozen previous patents for secret communication systems dating back to the 1920s. Virtually all of them had emerged from Western Electric, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), or Bell Labs—the third having been formed in 1925 as a result of the consolidation of the first two. A number of the authors, including well-known pioneers of communications Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, later participated in the top-secret Project X during World War II. Declassified patents from Project X also reveal a few additional pieces of prior art from the 1920s and 1930s. Glenn Babecki, an electrical engineer, and I have examined these early patents.

在当时,哈钦森做了一件不同寻常的高尚行为,他列出了一份可追溯到 20 年代的十二项保密通信系统专利清单。这些专利几乎全部来自西方电气公司、美国电话电报公司(AT&T)或贝尔实验室——后者是前两者于 1925 年合并而成的。这些专利的作者中,包括通信领域的知名先驱哈里·奈奎斯特和拉尔夫·哈特利,他们后来都参与了第二次世界大战期间的绝密项目 X。项目 X 的解密专利还揭示了一些来自 20 年代和 30 年代的其他早期技术成果。我和电气工程师格伦·贝贝基研究了这些早期专利。

Every one of them proposes ensuring the secrecy of a message by hopping unpredictably among a group of low-frequency audio channels. In the majority of patents, the scrambled message is then transmitted by telephone line or radio along a single high-frequency carrier wave, making the system secure but not jam proof. Because the carrier wave is held at a constant frequency, we would probably not refer to this group of patents as frequency-hopping patents in the modern sense. On the other hand, Hutchinson’s list reveals that in 1940 Purington had already received a patent (U.S. Patent 2,204,050) for a secrecy scheme that incorporates the frequency-wobbling concept and so could be called frequency hopping. An even earlier Purington patent (U.S. Patent 1,992,441, from 1935, overlooked by Hutchinson) also utilizes frequency wobbling.

这些专利都提出了通过在一组低频音频信道之间不可预测地跳变来确保信息的保密性。在大多数专利中,随后会通过电话线或无线电沿着单一高频载波传输被扰乱的信息,使系统安全但不抗干扰。由于载波保持恒定频率,我们可能不会将这一组专利称为现代意义上的频率跳变专利。另一方面,哈钦森的清单显示,普林顿在 1940 年已经获得了一项专利(美国专利 2,204,050),该专利包含频率摆动的概念,因此可以被称为频率跳变。普林顿的另一项更早的专利(1935 年的美国专利 1,992,441,哈钦森忽略了这项专利)也使用了频率摆动。

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Direct-sequencing is another form of spread spectrum, used in modern cordless phones, Wi-Fi, and the Global Positioning System (GPS). For transmission (top), it merges a sent-data input (A) with a high data-rate bitstream (B) to produce a new signal (C) that is highly resistant to both jamming and interference. At the receiving end, the bitstream is removed, or demodulated, to recover the original data input (bottom).
 
直接序列是扩频的另一种形式,用于现代无绳电话、Wi-Fi 和全球定位系统(GPS)。在传输(顶部)过程中,它将发送的数据输入(A)与高数据速率的比特流(B)合并,产生一种对干扰和阻塞都有很强抵抗力的新信号(C)。在接收端,移除(解调)比特流以恢复原始数据输入(底部)。
 
Illustration adapted by Barbara Aulicino. 插图由芭芭拉·奥利奇诺改编

Despite his honorable intentions, Hutchinson missed the proposal of Dutch inventor Willem Broertjes, who on October 11, 1929, submitted a patent application in Germany for a “Method of Maintaining Secrecy in the Transmission of Wireless Telegraph Messages.” A month later Broertjes filed an application in America, and in 1932 he was awarded U.S. Patent 1,869,659. In it, he writes that

The known methods of maintaining secrecy operate, in most cases, with codes or cryptograms and with a periodically modified transmission frequency, which is received by means of a receiving apparatus, the tuning of which is modified in synchronism.

尽管哈钦森的意图是值得尊敬的,但他还是忽略了荷兰发明家威廉·布罗特杰斯的提议。1929 年 10 月 11 日,布罗特杰斯在德国提交了一项“在无线电报传输中保持保密的方法”的专利申请。一个月后,布罗特杰斯在美国提交了申请,并于 1932 年获得了美国专利 1,869,659。他在其中写道:众所周知的保密方法,在大多数情况下,使用密码或密码文以及定期改变的传输频率,通过接收设备接收,该设备的调谐会同步改变。

According to Broertjes, then, the idea of changing transmission frequencies is already commonplace, but he argues that this approach does not prevent the interception and decipherment of the message, because a broadband receiver could pick up all the frequencies. As Lamarr and Antheil did later, Broertjes then proposes a system in which a number of “working frequencies,” known to the sender and receiver alone, can be varied in a “random or variable manner,” or even left out. “In a method of this kind,” he writes,secrecy is ensured by reason of the fact that an unauthorized receiver which at first, is tuned in to only a single frequency length, picks up only disconnected portions of the message.

科特杰斯认为,改变传输频率的想法已经很常见了,但他认为这种方法无法防止信息被截获和破译,因为宽带接收器可以接收所有频率。和后来的拉玛与安泰尔一样,科特杰斯接着提出了一个系统,其中只有发送者和接收者才知道的一些“工作频率”,可以以“随机或可变的方式”改变,甚至可以省略。他写道:“在这种方法中,保密性得以确保,原因在于一个最初仅调谐到单一频率的未经授权的接收器,只能截获信息的不连续部分。”

The Broertjes patent can be faulted in that the operation of the receiving mechanism is left largely as an exercise for the reader. The transmitter includes a “code wheel” that selects a new frequency each time a telegraph key is depressed. One can only assume that the receiver contains a duplicate wheel, but Broertjes prefers manual operation, so it remains unclear how he intends synchronization to be effected. Despite its flaws, Broertjes’s invention proves that the frequency-hopping concept was available in Germany well before the war.

布罗特杰斯的专利有一个缺点,那就是接收机制的操作在很大程度上留给读者去想象。发射器包括一个“编码轮”,每次按下电报键时都会选择一个新的频率。人们只能假设接收器包含一个相同的轮子,但布罗特杰斯倾向于手动操作,因此他打算如何实现同步仍然不清楚。尽管存在缺陷,布罗特杰斯的发明证明,在战争爆发之前很久,德国就已经有了频率跳变的概念。

But the fundamental law of invention and discovery is the “infinite chain of priority,” which ensures that someone else always did it first. In this case, the chain included Emory-Leon Chaffee, a Harvard University physicist who had worked with Purington at Hammond Laboratory. In an application filed in 1922 but granted only in 1927 (U.S. Patent 1,642,663), Chaffee describes a “System of Radiocommunication” that proposes wobbling the carrier frequency in an “erratic manner” in order to provide secrecy.

然而,发明和发现的基本规律是“优先权的无限链条”,它确保总有人比你先想到。在这个案例中,这条链条包括了哈佛大学的物理学家埃默里 - 莱昂·查菲,他曾在哈蒙德实验室与普林顿一起工作过。查菲在 1922 年提交的一项专利申请(直到 1927 年才获得批准,美国专利 1,642,663)中描述了一种“无线电通信系统”,该系统提出以一种“不规则的方式”摆动载波频率,以实现保密。

Nor do the antecedents end here. Chaffee was beaten to the punch by another AT&T team, consisting of Otto B. Blackwell, De Loss K. Martin, and Gilbert S. Vernam, whose proposal not only predates all those on Hutchinson’s list, but also anticipates many features of the Broertjes and the Lamarr-Antheil inventions as well. On December 18, 1920, the team filed an application for a “Secrecy Communication System,” which was finally granted U.S. Patent 1,598,673 on September 7, 1926. The authors write:

Heretofore in certain types of signaling systems, in which a high frequency wave is utilized as the agency of transmitting the signals, the signals have been transmitted by electromagnetic waves of a definite high frequency or wave length and any station tuned to said wave length might be capable of receiving said signals. In the present invention secrecy is obtained by the transmission of signals on a plurality of waves of different frequencies, successive portions of a message being transmitted on waves of different frequencies whereby a station tuned to one of said waves receives only a partial and therefore unintelligible disclosure of the communication.

以前,在某些类型的信号系统中,利用高频波作为传输信号的手段,信号是通过具有确定高频或波长的电磁波传输的,任何调谐到该波长的站点都可能能够接收这些信号。在本发明中,通过在多个不同频率的波上传输信号来获得保密性,消息的连续部分在不同频率的波上传输,因此调谐到其中一个波的站点只能接收到部分的、因此是不可理解的通信内容。

The authors go on to say that the frequency shifting is “not accomplished in a cyclic order but rather in a random and variable manner.” Anticipating Antheil’s player-piano rolls, the team members employ perforated telegraph tape with randomly punched holes to control the frequency hopping. From a technical standpoint, their electronic implementation is superior to the Lamarr-Antheil version in all respects, and is superior to the other Bell Labs patents as well.

作者们接着说,频率变化“不是按循环顺序完成的,而是以随机和可变的方式进行的”。预见到安泰尔的钢琴演奏纸卷,团队成员使用带有随机打孔的电报纸带来控制频率跳变。从技术角度来看,他们的电子实现方式在所有方面都优于拉玛 - 安泰尔版本,也优于贝尔实验室的其他专利。

Infinite Regression

无限递归

At first glance, the patent of Blackwell, Martin, and Vernam appears to nail down the origin of frequency hopping, but the devil lies in the details. Like most of the later Bell Labs inventors, the authors evidently intended to transmit the message across a telephone line after randomly scrambling the audio frequencies to unspecified “higher” carrier frequencies. That approach implies a narrow transmission band. They do state that radio transmission would work equally well, but they do not make clear whether that additional carrier would also hop frequencies. Their patent therefore seems to represent audio frequency hopping, but not radio frequency hopping. Interestingly, none of the later patents cite this one or Chaffee’s; whether this was the result of a simple oversight or some weightier consideration remains a mystery.

乍一看,布莱克威尔、马丁和维纳姆的专利似乎确定了频率跳变的起源,但细节中却隐藏着魔鬼。像大多数后来的贝尔实验室发明者一样,作者们显然打算在将音频频率随机扰乱到未指定的“更高”载波频率后,通过电话线传输信息。这种方法意味着一个狭窄的传输频带。他们确实说无线电传输同样有效,但他们没有明确说明那个额外的载波是否会跳变频率。因此,他们的专利似乎代表音频频率跳变,而不是无线电频率跳变。有趣的是,后来的专利中没有引用这一项或查菲的专利;这是由于简单的疏忽还是其他更重要的原因,仍然是一个谜。

The relative sophistication of the Blackwell, Martin, and Vernam patent compared with its successors demonstrates that technology does not always progress smoothly. It also illuminates the difference between a patent produced by amateurs and one produced by professionals. In 1919, Vernam had patented what has become known as the Vernam Cipher, in which a plaintext message is mixed with a random stream of characters to provide a coded message. It was the electronic implementation of the “one-time pad” (a message key used once and destroyed), which renowned information theorist Claude Shannon of Bell Labs later proved to be unbreakable.

布莱克威尔、马丁和维纳姆的专利与其后续专利相比所表现出的相对复杂性表明,技术进步并非总是顺利的。这也揭示了业余爱好者生产的专利与专业人士生产的专利之间的区别。1919 年,维纳姆申请了一种被称为维纳姆密码的专利,其中将明文消息与随机字符流混合以提供加密消息。这是“一次性密码本”(使用一次后销毁的消息密钥)的电子实现,贝尔实验室的著名信息理论家克劳德·香农后来证明这种密码是无法破解的。

The fundamental law of invention is the infinite chain of priority: Someone else always did it first.
 
发明的基本规律是优先权的无限链条:总有人比你先想到。

Vernam’s 1919 patent (U.S. Patent 1,310,719) is widely considered to be one of the most important in the history of cryptography, so it comes as no surprise that within a year he participated in the invention of a secure transmission system. Later, in one of the most secret projects of World War II, the U.S. military developed Project X, the first uncrackable communications system. It is unclear whether any aspects of the Blackwell, Martin, and Vernam patent influenced the project, but Vernam’s ideas on cryptography certainly did.

维纳姆 1919 年的专利(美国专利 1,310,719)被广泛认为是密码学历史上最重要的专利之一,因此他一年后参与发明一个安全传输系统也就不足为奇了。后来,在第二次世界大战期间最机密的项目之一中,美军开发了项目 X,这是第一个无法破解的通信系统。目前还不清楚布莱克威尔、马丁和维纳姆专利的任何方面是否影响了该项目,但维纳姆关于密码学的想法肯定产生了影响。

In the Blackwell, Martin, and Vernam patent we see the concept of frequency hopping partly realized, but the endless chain of priority ensures that, yes, the germ of the idea had appeared earlier still. Jonathan Zenneck was an early German radio pioneer who was held during World War I as an enemy alien in the United States, which he happened to be visiting at the war’s outbreak. His Wireless Telegraphy, the standard textbook on the subject for many years, appeared in Germany in 1909 and in English translation in 1915. In a chapter on receivers, Zenneck discusses varying the wavelength of messages:

在布莱克威尔、马丁和维纳姆的专利中,我们看到了部分实现的频率跳变概念,但无尽的优先权链条确保了,是的,这个想法的萌芽确实更早就出现了。乔纳森·泽内克是早期的德国无线电先驱之一,他在第一次世界大战期间作为敌侨被美国拘留,当时他正好在美国访问。他的《无线电报术》多年来一直是该主题的标准教科书,1909 年在德国出版,1915 年出版了英文译本。在关于接收器的一章中,泽内克讨论了改变信息的波长:

The interception of messages by stations other than those called, can be prevented to some extent by telegraphing so rapidly that such relays as are customarily used will not respond and only specially trained operators will be able to read the messages in the telephone. Furthermore, the apparatus can be so arranged that the wave-length is easily and rapidly changed and then vary the wave-length in accordance with a prearranged program, perhaps automatically. This method makes it very difficult for an uncalled listener to tune his receiver to the rapid variations, but it is of no avail against untuned, highly sensitive receivers.
 
通过快速电报传输,可以在一定程度上防止除指定站点外的其他站点截获信息,因为通常使用的中继器不会响应,只有经过特殊训练的操作员才能在电话中读取信息。此外,设备可以这样安排,即波长可以轻松且快速地改变,然后按照预先安排的程序,也许是自动地,改变波长。这种方法使得未经授权的监听者很难将接收器调谐到快速变化的频率上,但它对未调谐的高灵敏度接收器毫无作用。

Zenneck does not mention that for full secrecy the wavelengths should be shifted in an unpredictable manner, but otherwise the proposal is for frequency hopping in the modern sense. He adds in a footnote that “This method was adapted by the Telefunken Co. at one time,” showing that the core principle was applied as early as the opening of the 20th century.

泽内克没有提到,为了完全保密,波长应该以不可预测的方式改变,但除此之外,他的提议在现代意义上就是频率跳变。他在脚注中补充说:“这种方法曾被 Telefunken 公司采用过”,这表明这一核心原理早在 20 世纪初就被应用了。

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附文

Different Paths to Frequency Hopping

通往频率跳变的不同路径

Lamarr-Antheil patent: The sole Lamarr-Antheil patent outlines a process for frequency hopping using techniques similar to those in player pianos (diagram below). In the transmitter (top), a player-piano roll (37) is read by a mechanical/pneumatic control head (39), which according to the hole pattern, selects a capacitor from a capacitor bank (24). (The numbers here refer to component designations in the original patent.) The capacitor, in conjunction with the carrier oscillator (20), determines the carrier (transmission) frequency.

拉玛 - 安泰尔专利 :唯一的拉玛 - 安泰尔专利概述了一种使用类似钢琴演奏技术的频率跳变过程(下图)。在发射器(顶部)中,一个钢琴演奏纸卷(37)被一个机械 / 气动控制头(39)读取,根据孔的图案,从电容器组(24)中选择一个电容器。(这里的数字指的是原始专利中部件的名称。)电容器与载波振荡器(20)一起决定了载波(传输)频率。

Left- and right-control oscillators (34, 36) generate audio tones representing the left- and right-steering control signals for the torpedo. These signals are fed to the modulator (21), which combines them with the carrier wave to produce a modulated signal that is amplified and transmitted to the receiver. The design incorporates an additional layer of protection by providing more transmitting frequencies than the receiver can accept. A signal lamp (43) informs the operator when the carrier frequency is changing and when a dummy frequency is in play. The operator should not transmit steering signals during these times.

左控制振荡器和右控制振荡器(34、36)产生代表鱼雷左、右转向控制信号的音频音调。这些信号被送入调制器(21),调制器将它们与载波结合,产生一个被调制的信号,该信号被放大并传输到接收器。该设计通过提供比接收器能接受的更多的传输频率,增加了额外的保护层。信号灯(43)告知操作员载波频率何时变化以及何时使用虚拟频率。在这些时候,操作员不应传输转向信号。

The receiver is controlled by a player-piano mechanism (37’) similar to the transmitter’s, but it can only receive the true steering frequencies and not the dummy frequencies. It includes standard amplifier and demodulator components (64, 65) to recover the original signals. Left- and right-steering control signals are separated by filters (166, 566), which are rectified (168, 568) to provide a direct current to the relays (169, 569), which in turn operate the torpedo rudder.

接收器由一个与发射器类似的钢琴演奏装置(37’)控制,但它只能接收真正的转向频率,而不是虚拟频率。它包括标准的放大器和解调器部件(64、65),用于恢复原始信号。左转向和右转向控制信号通过滤波器(166、566)分离,然后整流(168、568),为继电器(169、569)提供直流电,继电器进而操作鱼雷舵。

Synchronization between the transmitter and receiver is achieved only by releasing both paper rolls at the same instant. If the transmitter and receiver get out of phase, or if an incorrect bit is received, the game is over.

只有同时释放两个纸卷,发射器和接收器之间才能实现同步。如果发射器和接收器失去同步,或者接收到一个错误的比特,游戏就结束了。

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Diagram by Glenn Babecki. 图表由格伦·贝贝基绘制

Broertjes patent: Like the Lamarr-Antheil patent, the 1929 frequency-hopping patent of Willem Broertjes incorporates both operational and dummy frequencies to obfuscate message transmission (diagram below). Each time an operator depresses a telegraph key (S), an escapement drive (B) moves a disc switch (M). (Here, too, letters refer to the designations in the original patent.) The wiring of this code wheel determines the sequence of the operational and dummy frequencies. The disc switch selects a capacitor from the bank (k1…), which in combination with the inductor (L) in the tapped tuning coil determines a carrier frequency for the transmission.

布罗特杰斯专利 :和拉玛 - 安泰尔专利一样,威廉·布罗特杰斯 1929 年的频率跳变专利也结合了工作频率和虚拟频率,以混淆信息传输(下图)。每当操作员按下电报键(S)时,一个脱扣驱动装置(B)就会移动一个圆盘开关(M)。(在这里,字母也指的是原始专利中的名称。)这个编码轮的接线决定了工作频率和虚拟频率的顺序。圆盘开关从电容器组(k1…)中选择一个电容器,与抽头调谐线圈中的电感器(L)一起决定了传输的载波频率。

Since Broertjes’s invention is meant to be used for telegraphy (Morse code), the carrier wave is the only signal produced, and a modulator is unnecessary. The signal is amplified by a vacuum tube in the oscillator (Z) and transmitted. When a dummy frequency has been selected by the exchange switches (c1…), the motor-driven interruptors (o1…) produce a periodic dummy signal. The interruptors themselves can be bypassed by switches (s1…) and taken out of the circuit. Broertjes indicates in his patent that the design has been implemented, but he does not discuss the receiver in any detail; his intended method of synchronization remains unclear.

由于布罗特杰斯的发明是用于电报(莫尔斯电码),所以载波是唯一产生的信号,不需要调制器。信号由振荡器(Z)中的真空管放大并传输。当交换开关(c1…)选择了虚拟频率时,由电机驱动的中断器(o1…)产生周期性的虚拟信号。这些中断器本身可以通过开关(s1…)旁路并从电路中移除。布罗特杰斯在他的专利中指出,该设计已经实现,但他没有详细讨论接收器;他打算使用的同步方法仍然不清楚。

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**Diagram by Glenn Babecki.**图表由格伦·贝贝基绘制

Blackwell, Martin, and Vernam patent: Otto Blackwell, De Loss Martin, and Gilbert Vernam patented the “Secrecy Communication System”—a direct predecessor to frequency hopping (diagram below). Audio channels (the original message) are shifted in a pseudorandom sequence to higher frequencies by a switching matrix according to a pattern encoded in a perforated telegraph tape and sent via a tape transmitter. The higher frequencies are combined with carrier frequencies in the modulators; the modulated signals are separated by band-pass filters, then transmitted.

布莱克威尔、马丁和维纳姆专利 :奥托·布莱克威尔、德洛斯·马丁和吉尔伯特·维纳姆申请了“保密通信系统”专利,这是频率跳变的直接前身(下图)。音频信道(原始消息)根据编码在穿孔电报纸带中的模式,通过一个开关矩阵以伪随机序列转移到更高的频率,并通过纸带发射器发送。更高的频率与载波频率在调制器中结合;调制后的信号通过带通滤波器分离,然后传输。

The receiver is basically a mirror image of the transmitter: It demodulates the incoming signals, down-converting them to their original frequencies according to the switching pattern in the telegraph tape, to recover the message. Although the patent authors state that the hopped transmission can be accomplished by radio, they apparently do not intend to shift the radio carrier, meaning that this patent frequency-hops in audio but not in radio frequency.

接收器基本上是发射器的镜像:它解调传入的信号,根据电报纸带中的开关模式将它们下变频到原始频率,以恢复消息。尽管专利作者声称可以通过无线电实现跳变传输,但他们显然不打算改变无线电载波,这意味着该专利在音频中进行频率跳变,而不是在无线电频率中。

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Diagram by Barbara Aulicino. 图表由芭芭拉·奥利奇诺绘制

Yet even Zenneck’s book is not the technology’s urtext. Given that Nikola Tesla’s obsessive fans have credited him with inventing the radio, the laser, the electron microscope, and the atomic bomb, it would be almost surprising if he hadn’t invented frequency hopping, too. Here, Tesla might even have a legitimate claim. In U.S. Patent 723,188 (applied for in 1901, granted in 1903), he considers a “Method of Signaling” that consists of two or more transmitters operating on different frequencies. The receiver is designed to respond only when both signals are received.

然而,泽内克的书也不是这项技术的“原始文本”。鉴于尼古拉·特斯拉的狂热粉丝们已经将无线电、激光、电子显微镜和原子弹的发明都归功于他,如果他没有发明频率跳变,那才真是令人惊讶。在这里,特斯拉甚至可能有合法的主张。在美国专利 723,188(1901 年申请,1903 年授予)中,他考虑了一种“信号方法”,由两个或两个以上在不同频率上工作的发射器组成。接收器只有在同时接收到两个信号时才会响应。

Tesla’s language is obscure, but his essential idea is the familiar one that by varying the frequencies in a predetermined pattern, only the desired receiver will be able to detect the transmitted message. Here the chain of priority at last fades out, for if one goes much earlier, the concept of radio itself had yet to be born.

特斯拉的语言晦涩难懂,但他最基本的想法是人们熟悉的:通过以预定模式改变频率,只有预定的接收器才能检测到传输的信息。在这里,优先权的链条终于逐渐消失了,因为如果再往前追溯,无线电的概念本身都还未诞生。

The Randomness of History

历史的偶然性

No history of invention will ever be complete. In a seminal 1982 article on the history of spread-spectrum communications, electrical engineer Robert Scholtz of the University of Southern California cites several hundred contributions to the technology’s development. Nevertheless he overlooked some, including the Lamarr-Antheil patent and the other early patents discussed here. The 1994 Spread Spectrum Communications Handbook, by Marvin Simon, Jim Omura, Robert Scholtz, and Barry Levitt, awards Lamarr and Antheil their due prominence but still misses others. At the other extreme, Bombshell fails to mention any of Lamarr and Antheil’s predecessors.

发明的历史永远不会完整。在 1982 年一篇关于扩频通信历史的开创性文章中,南加州大学的电气工程师罗伯特·肖尔茨引用了对该技术发展有贡献的几百项成果。尽管如此,他还是忽略了一些,包括拉玛 - 安泰尔专利以及这里讨论的其他早期专利。1994 年,马文·西蒙、吉姆·奥姆拉、罗伯特·肖尔茨和巴里·莱维特合著的《扩频通信手册》给予了拉玛和安泰尔应有的突出地位,但仍然遗漏了其他一些人。而在另一个极端,《爆炸性新闻》甚至没有提及拉玛和安泰尔的任何前辈。

Any approach to the history of science and technology that aggrandizes lone inventors is largely static: Beyond the snapshots of inspirational eureka moments, nothing much happens. Borrowing a metaphor from biology, we might call this view “extreme punctuated equilibrium.” Between disruptive interventions of genius, scientific progress grinds to a halt.

任何夸大单一发明家的科学技术史方法都是相对静止的:除了那些鼓舞人心的灵光一现的瞬间快照之外,似乎什么都没发生。借用生物学的一个隐喻,我们可以将这种观点称为“极端间断平衡”。在天才的破坏性介入之间,科学进步停滞不前。

Yet surely in science and technology the protagonists should be the ideas themselves. The essential lessons—and excitement—from the history of science derive from observing the evolution of an idea, from its nebulous birth to the time at which it condenses into recognizable form. Ideas, in a real sense, have a life of their own. In science, if you don’t think of something, someone else will, and in nearly the same words, as the frequency-hopping patents amply demonstrate.

然而,在科学和技术中,主角应该是思想本身。从科学史中得到的基本教训和兴奋来自于观察一个思想的演变,从它模糊的诞生到它凝聚成可识别形式的时候。在真正意义上,思想有它们自己的生命。在科学中,如果你没有想到某件事,其他人会想到,而且几乎会用同样的措辞,正如频率跳变专利充分展示的那样。

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Dutch inventor Willem Broertjes described a form of frequency hopping for secure communication in a patent (left) filed in 1929, a dozen years before Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil filed. In 1920 American Telephone and Telegraph researchers Otto Blackwell, De Loss Martin, and Gilbert Vernam patented a system (right) that anticipated pivotal aspects of later frequency-hopping schemes, including changing frequencies by punching random holes in a telegraph tape.
 
荷兰发明家威廉·布罗特杰斯在 1929 年提交的专利()中描述了一种用于安全通信的频率跳变形式,比海蒂·拉玛和乔治·安泰尔提交早了十二年。1920 年,美国电话电报公司的研究人员奥托·布莱克威尔、德洛斯·马丁和吉尔伯特·维纳姆申请了一种系统()的专利,该系统预见了后来频率跳变方案的关键方面,包括通过在电报纸带上随机打孔来改变频率。
 
U. S. Patent Office
美国专利局

If ideas are born of necessity, then the mother of secret communications has been war. Most of the research into spread-spectrum transmission took place in anticipation of war, or during war itself. By some estimates, during World War II as many as 90 percent of German electronics engineers were involved in the country’s (ultimately unsuccessful) anti-jamming campaign. Under such circumstances, the invention of frequency hopping was not just probable, it was inevitable.

如果思想是出于需要而产生的,那么战争就是秘密通信之母。大多数扩频传输的研究都是在战争之前或战争期间进行的。据估计,在第二次世界大战期间,德国多达 90% 的电子工程师参与了该国(最终未能成功)的反干扰运动。在这样的情况下,频率跳变的发明不仅有可能,而且是不可避免的。

Tracing the development of a technology such as frequency hopping in an evolutionary fashion is not easy. History begins to vanish the moment a blackboard is erased. In this case, not only were numerous patents overlooked, but much of the work was classified, leaving gaps in the historical record and resulting in repeated, near-duplicate inventions. At about the time Lamarr and Antheil were finalizing their ideas, the U.S. Army Signal Corps commissioned Bell Labs engineers to begin work on Project X, also known by its code name, SIGSALY. Based on the labs’ earlier vocoder (voice encoder) system, SIGSALY went online in 1943, ultimately carrying encrypted voice communications between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

以进化的方式追溯像频率跳变这样的技术的发展并不容易。历史在黑板被擦掉的那一刻就开始消失了。在这个案例中,不仅许多专利被忽略了,而且很多工作都被列为机密,这在历史记录中留下了空白,并导致了重复的、几乎相同的发明。就在拉玛和安泰尔完善他们的想法的时候,美国陆军信号队委托贝尔实验室的工程师开始研究项目 X,也被称为其代号 SIGSALY。基于实验室早期的声码器(语音编码器)系统,SIGSALY 于 1943 年上线,最终承担了美国总统富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福和英国首相温斯顿·丘吉尔之间的加密语音通信。

SIGSALY became the first completely uncrackable secret communications system. It digitized the voices of the interlocutors and then scrambled their amplitudes according to one-time pads, which in this case were vinyl recordings that sampled the randomly fluctuating brightness of mercury-vapor lamps. These vinyls—cousins of Antheil’s player-piano rolls—were shipped to Washington and London, where turntables tuned to the National Bureau of Standards timing signal started up at the same instant. After a single use, the vinyls were destroyed.

SIGSALY 成为第一个完全无法破解的秘密通信系统。它将对话者的语音数字化,然后根据一次性密码本对它们的振幅进行扰乱,而这里的“一次性密码本”是乙烯基唱片,它记录了汞蒸气灯随机变化的亮度。这些乙烯基唱片——安泰尔的钢琴演奏纸卷的表亲——被运往华盛顿和伦敦,在那里,调谐到国家标准局时钟信号的唱盘同时启动。使用一次后,这些乙烯基唱片就被销毁了。

Because SIGSALY scrambled voice amplitudes rather than frequencies, it was not de jure frequency hopping. Then again, because transmission of the radio signals involved frequency modulation, the random amplitudes got scrambled to random frequencies, making it a de facto frequency-hopping scheme. To this day SIGSALY is little known to the public, surely because many of its innovations remained classified until 1976.

由于 SIGSALY 扰乱的是语音振幅而不是频率,因此它在法律上并不是频率跳变。然而,由于无线电传输涉及频率调制,随机振幅被打乱到随机频率,使其实际上成为一个频率跳变方案。直到今天,SIGSALY 仍然鲜为人知,这肯定是因为它的许多创新直到 1976 年仍然保密。

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SIGSALY, a speech-encryption system operated by the U.S. Army starting in 1943, used a hopping-like scheme to make messages secure. It was nicknamed “Green Hornet” for the buzzing sound heard by any would-be eavesdroppers. The system consisted of 40 racks of equipment, including a dedicated cooling unit and two synchronized turntables on both the sending and receiving ends. In total, it weighed more than 20 tons.
 
SIGSALY 是一种语音加密系统,由美国陆军于 1943 年开始操作,它采用了类似跳变的方案来确保信息的安全。由于任何潜在的窃听者都能听到嗡嗡声,它被昵称为“绿角侠”。该系统由 40 个机架的设备组成,包括一个专用冷却装置以及发送端和接收端的两个同步唱盘。总共重达 20 多吨。
 
Wikimedia Commons

During the postwar era, another major effort at developing a secure, jam-proof system was put forth by Sylvania with its Buffalo Laboratories Application of Digitally Exact Spectra, or BLADES, which began in 1955 as system for communicating with Polaris submarines. It was tested by 1957 and in 1963 it was installed on the flagship U.S.S. Mount McKinley, where it successfully thwarted intentional jamming efforts. Evidently it was the earliest frequency-hopping system put into action. The details of BLADES are still murky, because it was (and perhaps remains) classified.

在战后时期,西尔维尼亚公司通过其布法罗实验室应用精确数字光谱(BLADES)又做出了另一个开发安全、抗干扰系统的主要努力,该系统始于 1955 年,用于与北极星潜艇通信。它在 1957 年进行了测试,并于 1963 年安装在旗舰美国舰“麦金利山”号上,在那里它成功地挫败了故意的干扰企图。显然,这是最早投入使用的频率跳变系统。由于 BLADES(也许仍然是)保密的,其细节仍然不清楚。

The secrecy surrounding BLADES and other military research has bolstered the story that early frequency-hopping systems put into practice after World War II all derived from the Lamarr-Antheil patent. Reality is neither so simple nor so linear. The handful of available patents that provide the basis for BLADES’s operation make no mention of the Lamarr-Antheil patent. The ideas prevailed, not the individuals.

围绕 BLADES 和其他军事研究的保密性加强了这样一种说法:第二次世界大战后实际应用的早期频率跳变系统都源自拉玛 - 安泰尔专利。现实既不那么简单,也不那么直线。为 BLADES 操作提供基础的少数可用专利中没有提到拉玛 - 安泰尔专利。是思想占了上风,而不是个人。

Shadows of Invention

发明的阴影

Although the spread-spectrum approach is now ubiquitous in commercial communications, tracking its provenance is no easy task. Bluetooth technology does employ frequency hopping, but its inventor, Jaap Haartsen, tells me that he was unaware of the Lamarr-Antheil patent when he was working on the system at Ericsson in the 1990s. Frequency hopping was merely the standard that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required on the frequency band he intended to use for an interference-proof local communication system.

尽管扩频方法现在在商业通信中无处不在,但追溯其起源并非易事。蓝牙技术确实使用了频率跳变,但其发明者雅普·哈滕森告诉我,他在 20 世纪 90 年代在爱立信公司研发该系统时,并不知道拉玛 - 安泰尔专利。频率跳变仅仅是美国联邦通信委员会(FCC)要求在其打算用于抗干扰本地通信系统的频段上使用的一个标准。

Many recent articles cite Lamarr-Antheil’s invention as having been vital to the development of modern Wi-Fi, but Haartsen also points out that Wi-Fi abandoned frequency hopping early on, because it provided insufficient bandwidth. For a time, Wi-Fi used a spread-spectrum technique known as direct sequencing, but since a change in FCC rules, it employs yet another type of spread-spectrum technology, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. The Global Positioning System (GPS), another alleged part of Lamarr’s legacy, has always used direct sequencing. Although the early 2G cellular network did use a form of frequency hopping, later networks have employed direct sequencing and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. Any link to player pianos and torpedoes has yet to be demonstrated.

许多最近的文章都提到拉玛 - 安泰尔的发明对现代 Wi-Fi 的发展至关重要,但哈滕森也指出,Wi-Fi 很早就放弃了频率跳变,因为它提供的带宽不足。一段时间内,Wi-Fi 使用了一种名为“直接序列”的扩频技术,但自 FCC 规则改变以来,它采用了一种新的扩频技术——正交频分复用。全球定位系统(GPS)被认为是拉玛遗产的一部分,但它一直使用直接序列。尽管早期的 2G 移动网络确实使用了一种频率跳变形式,但后来的网络采用了直接序列和正交频分复用。与钢琴演奏和鱼雷的任何联系还有待证明。

If ideas are born of necessity, then the mother of secret communication has been war.
 
如果思想是出于需要而产生的,那么战争就是秘密通信之母。

As with the history of radio, an unofficial form of classification has left its distorting stamp on the history of frequency hopping: nationalism. All of the patents discussed here are German or American, but surely that cannot represent the full reality. During the lifetime of the Soviet Union, Western researchers had little idea of what was going on there, but that hardly means that Soviet scientists were idle. In 1935, a Russian communications engineer named Dmitri Vasilievich Ageev published a paper titled “Principles of the Theory of Linear Selection,” which lays down the mathematical basics of spread-spectrum techniques. There may well be other Soviet contributions that have not yet come to light, but we do know that as early as 1957, prototype mobile phones, evidently based on Ageev’s ideas, were operational in Moscow.

就像无线电的历史一样,一种非官方的分类形式也在频率跳变的历史上留下了扭曲的印记:民族主义。这里讨论的所有专利都是德国或美国的,但这肯定不能代表全部现实。在苏联时期,西方研究人员对其内部情况知之甚少,但这并不意味着苏联科学家无所事事。1935 年,一位名叫德米特里·瓦西里耶维奇·阿吉耶夫的俄罗斯通信工程师发表了一篇题为“线性选择理论原理”的论文,奠定了扩频技术的数学基础。可能还有其他苏联的贡献尚未被发现,但我们确实知道,早在 1957 年,基于阿吉耶夫思想的原型移动电话就在莫斯科投入了使用。

So long as large swaths of technological research take place under secrecy, redundancy and inefficiency will remain facts of life. As a former National Security Agency employee once remarked to me, “The military usually develops an idea 10 years before the civilian sector.” To the extent that the comment was not an idle boast, it does suggest considerable hidden and wasted intellectual resources. Private corporations, too, guard their secrets, fueling duplication of effort, even as cutthroat competition engenders horse-trading that allegedly keeps consumer prices down.

只要大量的技术研究在保密状态下进行,重复和低效就会是生活的现实。一位前国家安全局雇员曾对我说:“军方通常比民用部门早十年开发出一个想法。”如果这一评论并非信口开河,那么它确实表明有大量的智力资源被隐藏和浪费了。私人公司也是如此,它们保守自己的秘密,导致努力的重复,尽管激烈的竞争引发了所谓的降低消费者价格的讨价还价。

As a rule, scientists engaged in fundamental research would rather do something novel themselves than try to duplicate someone else’s results, which only adds to the noise. In that regard, the overwhelming concentration of talent at the old Bell Labs had its advantages. It may be too much to hope that a new system can be devised to streamline the chaos. Failing that, one can at least take solace from knowing that recognition for one’s accomplishments depends largely on the diligence of the patent search, and that the march of ideas will continue regardless of who gets the credit.

一般来说,从事基础研究的科学家宁愿自己做些新东西,也不愿去重复他人的成果,这只会增加混乱。在这方面,老贝尔实验室的人才高度集中确实有其优势。指望设计出一个新系统来简化这种混乱局面可能有些不切实际。退一步说,至少可以这样安慰自己:对自己成就的认可在很大程度上取决于专利检索的细致程度,而且无论谁得到赞誉,思想的进程都会继续下去。

Bibliography

  • Scholtz, R. A. 1982. The origins of spread spectrum communications. IEEE Communications Transactions 30:822–854.
  • Simon, M. K., J. K. Omura, R. A. Scholtz, and B. K. Levitt. 1994. The Spread Spectrum Communications Handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  • Rothman, T. 2003. Everything’s Relative and Other Fables from Science and Technology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.

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