IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2014 - 18

language in their patent application, demonstrated
how such bouncing around the spectrum could avoid
enemy detection, but they never spelled out exactly
how it worked. Rhodes says their "Secret Communication System" as they called it, was modeled on an
early remote device produced by Philco for radios.
Frequency hopping was like changing channels from
a remote control.
The Navy either didn't understand or was distracted by other events. But another of Lamarr's
inventions, a proximity fuse armed when a magnet
recognizes its proximity to a large metallic object,
was accepted by the Navy. According to Rhodes,
the fuse saved the lives of thousands of sailors from
kamikaze attacks.
Lamaar had to wait for recognition until 1997.
Antheil died in 1959, but their work, as Rhodes demonstrates, was a precursor to the so-called spreadspectrum technology that today gives us wireless
phones, GPS, and Wi-Fi.

Rhodes suspects that Lamarr's ideas were dismissed less from sexism and more from sheer obtuseness. Another cause might have been a turf war with
the Inventor's Council, which had the ear of FDR.
It's not a stretch to imagine Navy brass turning down
help from an unlikely source, a Hollywood celebrity,
even one so well connected (Antheil and Lamaar
had gained access to Washington through William C.
Bullitt, whom they met in Paris and who was the first
U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union). But it's even
less of a stretch to believe that the Navy may have
wanted some brother officer to walk the plank first.
Lamarr was bent on demonstrating her loyalty
to her new country while perhaps realizing that the
American public could not know about her secret work
for the Navy. Her achievements have begun to be recognized. In 1997 she received a Pioneer Award from
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco
nonprofit that defends digital rights and celebrates
electronic pioneers. She died in 2000, at the age of 86.

A. DAVID WUNSch

User Unfriendly: Consumer Struggles
with Personal Technologies
From Clocks and Sewing Machines to Cars and Computers
By Joseph J. Corn. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011, 272 pages.

magine that it is 1888, you are somewhere in
your mid-fifties and have just bought a hot
consumer product: a "safety bicycle." What
is a safety bicycle? Its predecessor, called the
"penny-farthing" was popular in the previous decade

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2014.2366923
Date of publication: 1 December 2014

and featured an enormous front wheel, a small back
wheel (like an English penny and farthing), and pedals attached directly to the front wheel. Only young,
strong, and affluent men had the means and courage
to own and ride a penny-farthing bicycle. A safety
bike looks from a distance like the familiar bikes used
throughout the 20th and 21st centuries: wheels both
the same size, around 26 inches in diameter, a conventional looking frame, and a chain connecting the front

A. David Wunsch is book review editor of this magazine. He is Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer
Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His email address is David_Wunsch@UML.edu.
18

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

WINTER 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2014