Hedy Lamarr, inventor of Frequency Hopping

Frequency-hopping with Hedwig Keisler, aka Heday Lamarr, linocut by minouette

This linocut portrait is of inventor and actress Hedy Lamarr (9 November 1914 – 19 January 2000), best known as a star of Hollywood's Golden Age. The linocut is printed in indigo and blue on Japanese kozo paper 9.25" by 12.5" (23.5 cm by 32 cm), inked à la poupée in an edition of 12.

Born Hedwig Keisler in 1914 in Vienna, Hedy became famous after her risqué and notorious starring role in Gustav Machatý's 1933 film Ecstasy. Friedrich Mandl, her first of six husbands (to whom she was married at the time), objected to what he felt was exploitation of his wife, including shots of her nude and simulating an orgasm. He tried unsuccessfully to buy up all copies of the film. Hedy objected to her husband, the munitions manufacturer, dealing with fascists including Mussolini and Hilter, despite the fact that she and her husband were both of Jewish heritage. Hedy had learned that the secret of her beauty was to, in her words "stand there and look stupid” though she was in fact highly intelligent, a mathematics prodigy, and an astute innovator. So while Axis leaders and arms dealers attended lavish parties at their castle home, Hedy gained a great deal of sensitive military intelligence, including intimate knowledge of the problems associate with radio-control of torpedoes. She decided to leave her controlling husband. She made her escape by disguising herself as her own maid (by drugging her and stealing her clothes), just in time to avoid the annexation of Austria. She took this intelligence with her to Paris, and on to London. In London she met Louis B. Mayer, who renamed her 'Hedy Lamarr' and hired her to work for MGM. She went on to make dozens of Hollywood films opposite all the big stars of the Golden Age, and was known as one of the most beautiful women in the world.

In 1940, spurned by the tragic sinking of a boatload of refugees, by a German U-boat torpedo, Hedy put her mind to the problem of national defense. She knew that torpedoes were guided by radio signals, of a single frequency, which were vulnerable to interference or "jamming". She had the idea that if multiple frequencies were employed, like a radio station which varied its channel unpredictably, it would not be possible for the enemy to find and interfere with the signal. This way the signal could be encoded across a broad spectrum. The difficulty would be in synchronizing the transmitter and the receiver, so they would be set at the appropriate frequency at all times. She met her neighbour, the avant-guard musician and composer George Antheil at a party. He had been working on automated control of musical instruments, including his music for Ballet Mécanique which involved synchronizing his melodies across twelve player pianos (or pianolas)! Is that not an excellent example of the wonderous region where art and science intersect? This was the answer. Together they developed Hedy's frequency-hopping idea, encorporating George's technology for synchronizing pianolas, and on the 11th of August, 1942, US Patent Number 2,292,387 for the "Secret Communications System" was granted to Antheil and to “Hedy Kiesler Markey”, which was her married name at the time. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano-roll to change among 88 frequencies (like the keys on a piano). Though the US navy did not adopt the method until 1962 (during their blockade of Cuba), and there other patents and inventors whose work contributed the modern methods, today, we recognize Hedy Lamarr as an important pioneer of wireless technology! Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as Bluetooth, COFDM (used in Wi-Fi network connections), CDMA (used in some cordless and wireless telephones) and 4G LTE communications. You are probably using a device right now which relies on these ideas.

In the print, I show a portrait of Hedy in 1941, along with Fig.4 from Lamarr and Antheil's patent, which relates to the use of the piano roll. Below this, I show a diagram of how the modern the frequency-hopping code division multiple access (FH-CDMA) scheme works. The wide square wave labelled 'Data' is a signal to be encoded, with pulse width T_b. 'PRBS' means pseudo random binary sequence. It's the way the changes in frequency are introduced and plays the role of the piano roll today. It runs at a much higher rate than the data to be transmitted, with pulse width T_c. Data for transmission is combined via bitwise XOR (exclusive OR) with the faster code. This means that that if the two waveforms, the data and the PRBS are unequal, the transmitted signal (labelled Tx) will be high. Otherwise the transmitted signal will be low. The transmitted signal is spread across a spectrum of frequencies by a factor determined by the ratio of the two pulse widths; the bandwidth is increased by a factor of T_b/T_c. Since the PRBS, known as the "pseudo-noise" (PN) code can be can be reproduced in a deterministic manner by the intended receiver (which is equivalent to reproducing the imaginary piano roll), it can decode the signal. This spread spectrum encoding is at the heart of all our contemporary telecommunications and is only possible using the kind of frequency hopping that Hedwig Kiesler, also known as Hedy Lamarr, invented.

Blue Orchard Mason Bee

I made my sixth bee of the region. This is an important local bee, Osmia Lignaria, known as the orchard mason bee, or blue orchard bee, in a lino block print on Japanese kozo (mulberry) paper with gorgeous, irridecent, translucent non-woven blue and gossamer-like white silk tissue washi chine collé (collaged fine Japanese paper). Each print is 15.2 cm (6 inches) square. The print is one of only 7.

Working with these papers was challenging. They are remarkably strong for their nature... but they are almost more like barely-there fabric, than paper. The white tissue really is like spider silk; strong, yet breakable and very very fine.

We think of bees as living in hives, but these bees live in reeds or natural holes which they divide into chambers with mud walls. We also tend to picture yellow and black stripes, but this small bee is blue to blue-green. Osmia Lignaria is a common species used for early spring fruit bloom in Canada and the United States, though a number of species of other Osmia are cultured for use in pollination. Bee keepers often make collections of paper tubes of wooden 'bee condos' in which these useful bees can make their nests. You can build your own bee condo, if you are interested.

Horse Latitudes

I've been reading a cultural history of the sea and it inspired me to illustrate the 'horse latitudes' (with horses galloping across the subtropical highs upon the Pacific, of course).



It is printed by hand on lovely Japanese kozo (or mulberry paper), 11 inches by 12.5 inches (27.9 cm by 31.8 cm), in an edition of 12.

I carved a view of the hemisphere, complete with all the islands and continents in reverse, showing the major trade wind patterns. The winds travel consistently east to west along the hot equator, west to east in high latitudes like the 'roaring 40s', but at the horse latitudes, between 30 and 35 degrees, both north and south, in the region of the subtropical highs known as the horse latitudes, things are not so predictable. It is consistently warm and dry, but winds are variable, which, once upon a time, could be terrifying to sailors. I've illustrated the horse latitudes with actual little horses, galloping around the planet. Since this this print is about the sea, it is the oceans which are 'positive' (printed in ink) and the land which is the negative space. Sometimes we look at the oceans as the space which separates the land masses, but it is possible to have the opposite view or consider the oceans as what connects us all. I love the unexpectedness of this name, and playing with words.

The origins of the term are debated. Some claim that the name comes from sailor's "dead horse" ritual, during which they would beat a straw effigy of a horse and then throw it overboard; they did this to celebrate having worked off their "dead horse time" (the period they were in debt to the paymaster, since they spent their advance pay too quickly, ending up broke by the time a westbound ship from Europe could reach the horse latitudes). Others claim that Spanish colonial ships to the New World, laden with horses, would risk being becalmed in the doldrums or horse latitudes, and when fresh water ran scarce, the horses were the first to go (though this might be a mere folk legend).

The typography of the word horse is designed to suggest the animal, with its mane and hooves. The horses themselves are inspired by Muybridge's early photos, showing their motion. I've also very specifically chosen the view of our Earth. We have many biases in maps; we expect north to be up, but that's arbitrary, and here in North America we expect to see the Americas on the left (because we read left to right). But, in this print, it's all about the Pacific, so it goes in the middle.

I'm really proud of writing that description without feeling compelled to try and first explain about Hadley cells. That took restraint.

Reflecting on the Moon Pillow

This month, the MSOE are honouring the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. I am playing with the idea of reflection (to think back, refléchir, the reflection of light and reflection after a collosion). I carved a reduction print* lino block of the moon reflected in the sea. The way we usually see the moon, its light refracted through the atmosphere, is rather like trying to do astronomy from the bottom of a swimming pool - we can only really see a distorted image of our night sky from Earth, like observing the moon's reflection on the ocean. Actually going to the moon, allowed humankind a direct observation like no other.

The moon itself was formed, early in the evolution of our solar system, when a Mars-sized object collided with the young Earth. The object shattered and large amounts of the young planet's early mantle splashed up into orbit. Eventually all this material, both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial coalesced under gravity and our home gained a satellite we know as the moon.







*A reduction print involves carving a block, printing one colour, carving some and printing the subsequent colour or colours on top. It is not a technique a use often.

Jellyfish and Seahorse Pillow

Here two of my most intricately carved sea creatures meet up, face to face (do jellyfish have faces, I wonder?) in this graphic hand-printed pillow. The jellyfish linoleum block is printed in pale mauve on navvy cotton. The seahorse linoleum block is printed in gold on irridescent green raw silk. The reverse is a modern print canvas in orange and red on white (complete with handprinted minouette label with tentacles in turquoise on vintage floral cotton). The pillow has a bold, luxurious and modern, yet handmade look. It is indeed one of a kind.

The pillow is 35 cm wide by 30 cm tall (or 13.5 inches by 12 inches).

Frog and Lily Cushion

This whimsical, one of a kind, throw pillow: the wetlands for the living room. It has a hard-carved linoleum block print of a frog and lily pads with lotus flower, printed on pin-striped lime green cotton fabric with a stripe of faux-bois fabric below. The reverse is a patchwork of cotton prints; another pond scene with frogs, lily pads and turtles in olive green, a very modern circle pattern in pistachio and robin's egg blue and patterned hot pink and fuschia.

The pillow is 35 cm or 14 inches wide by 28 cm or 11 inches tall by 8 cm or 3 inches thick (at its widest).