Secret [Mis]communication System

Incoming Editorial Team·Verified October 17, 2026

The film is based on the drawings and graphic illustrations taken from the patent “Secret Communication System”, registered as US2292387. When work on radio-controlled torpedoes began in the early 1940s, it became clear that an enemy would have little trouble intercepting the frequency of a control signal. In 1942, to fix that problem, the film actress Hedy Lamarr and the composer George Antheil proposed changing the carrier frequency of transmitter and receiver by means of a perforated paper tape, of the kind used in a player piano. Lamarr and Antheil’s invention folded musical logic into the mechanics of war, fulfilling the modernist utopia’s hope that art and technological progress might pass into one another.