13:
Wireless
And
Broadcast
Harvard CSCI E-2a
December 15, 2008
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source
Books and radio
Broadcast
internet
And TV
newspapers
???
destination
regulation
source
Less
regulation
Books and
newspapers
internet
Broadcast radio
and TV
More
regulation
???
destination
regulation
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April 15, 1912
Alignment of
Military interests
Commercial interests
Huge public catalyzing event
Result is … Congress
acts
When the world weeps together
over a common loss .. why
should not the nations clear the
sea of its conflicting idioms and
wisely regulate this new servant
of humanity [radio]?
Speech on US Senate floor, May
28, 1912
William Alden Smith
Radio Act of 1912
no one could broadcast without a license
from the Secretary of Commerce
permissible frequencies were assigned by
the Secretary of Commerce
Military
got excellent frequencies, especially the navy
Commercial shipping and other
commercial use
Amateurs
got banned altogether from “useful”
frequencies
relegated to what were called the "short
wavelengths“ (above 1000KHz) which at that
time considered technologically unusable
Military
Commercial
(wireless telegraphy)
Amateur (unusable)
Herbert Hoover
This section [requiring licensing] does not
give the head of that department
[Commerce] discretionary power over
the issue of licenses .. The license
system proposed is substantially the
same as that in use for the
documenting upward of 25,000
merchant vessels.
-- Report of House committee that
recommended passage of the Radio Act
of 1912
Military
Commercial
(wireless telegraphy)
Herbert Hoover
Broadcasting uses a “a
great national asset,” i.e.
the spectrum,
So it is “of primary public
interest to say who is to do
the broadcasting, under
what circumstances, and
with what type of material.”
Herbert Hoover
1874-1964
Herbert Hoover, Speech to
the First National Radio
Conference, February 27,
1922
United States v. Zenith Radio Corp. et al.
12 F.2d 614; 1926
The Secretary of Commerce is required to issue the
license subject to the regulations in the [Radio
Act of 1912]. The Congress has withheld from
him the power to prescribe additional regulations.
and quoting the Supreme Court:
“When we consider the nature and the theory of
our institutions of government, the principles
upon which they are supposed to rest, and
review the history of their development, we are
constrained to conclude that they do not mean to
leave room for the play and action of purely
personal and arbitrary power.”
Radio Act of 1927
 There would be no private ownership in the
spectrum
 So from 1927 on, the spectrum was public
property
 spectrum licensed by Federal Radio
Commission: FRC
 standard for licensing was public interest
standard
 Successor was the Communications Act of
1934. Combined regulation for wired and
wireless. FRC became the FCC (Federal
Communications Commission)
Radio Act of 1927
SEC. 29.
Nothing in this Act shall be understood or construed
to give the licensing authority the power of
censorship over the radio communications or
signals transmitted by any radio station, and no
regulation or condition shall be promulgated or
fixed by the licensing authority which shall
interfere with the right of free speech by means
of radio communications.
No person within the jurisdiction of the United
States shall utter any obscene, indecent, or
profane language by means of radio
communications.
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging
the freedom of speech, or of
the press; or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and
to petition the government for a
redress of grievances.
John Romulus Brinkley (1885-1941)
The Goat Gland Surgeon
Radio Station KFKB (Kansas First, Kansas Best)
KFKB Broadcasting Ass’n, Inc.,
v.
Federal Radio Commission
60 App. D.C. 79; 47 F.2d 670;1931
It is apparent, we think, that the
[broadcasting] business is impressed
with a public interest and that,
because the number of available
broadcasting frequencies is limited,
the commission is necessarily called
upon to consider the character and
quality of the service to be rendered.
National Broadcasting Co. v. U.
S.,
319 U.S. 190 (1943)
… the radio spectrum simply is not large
enough to accommodate everybody. There
is a fixed natural limitation upon the
number of stations that can operate
without interfering with one another.
Unlike other modes of expression, radio
inherently is not available to all. That is its
unique characteristic, and that is why,
unlike other modes of expression, it is
subject to governmental regulation. …
- Justice Felix Frankfurter
source
Less
regulation
Books and
newspapers
internet
bits
Broadcast radio
and TV
More
regulation
???
destination
regulation
National Broadcasting Co. v. U.
S.,
319 U.S. 190 (1943)
… the radio spectrum simply is not large enough
to accommodate everybody.
There is a fixed natural limitation upon the
number of stations that can operate without
interfering with one another. - Justice Felix
Frankfurter
Spread Spectrum Tradeoff:
Lower Power <==> Larger
Bandwidth to Get Same
Channel Capacity (bits/sec)
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http://sss-mag.com/primer.html#ds
Hedy Lamarr
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Hedy Lamarr
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 ~1914: Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna
 First woman to appear nude in a feature film,
Ecstasy (1933), when she was age 19
After release of film,
married wealthy
industrialist Fritz
Mandl, who tried to
buy up and burn all
the prints
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Hedy Lamarr
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Hostess for Mandl’s parties in Vienna,
where they entertained his business
friends
“Any girl can be glamorous.
All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.”
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Louis Mayer and
America
 Kiesler became increasingly hostile both to
the Nazis and to her husband Mandl
 In 1937 she hired a maid who looked like her,
then drugged the maid and escaped to Paris
in the maid’s uniform
 She met movie mogul Louis Mayer, who gave
her a movie contract and the name Hedy
Lamarr
 Divorced Mandl on grounds of desertion
 Emigrated to America and settled in
Hollywood
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George Antheil
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 Born 1900 in New Jersey, of Prussian parents
 Studied music in Philadelphia, became
concert pianist in Berlin and Paris
 Avant-garde composer of “mechanistic”
pieces such as Airplane Sonata and Death of
Machines
 Ballet Mécanique was scored for 16 player
pianos, xylophone, and percussion; one
production had electric bells, airplane
propellers, and siren
Antheil in the
US
• By 1933, Antheil’s music was
out of fashion and he was
broke and moved to California
• Invented the “See Note” system of musical
notation, read down the page with each column
representing one note, like a player piano roll - also
a commercial failure
Man Ray photo
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Antheil and Endocrinology
 1936, Esquire: Glandbook for
the Questing Male and The
Glandbook for Practical Use
The Glandbook in Practical Use (Esquire, June 1936)
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Lamarr and Antheil
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 In 1940 Lamarr arranges to meet Antheil in
Hollywood
 She knows about Antheil’s applied endocrinology and
wants to know how to enlarge her nnnnnnn
 The next night they talk again and Lamarr says she
is thinking of quitting MGM and offering her services
to the National Inventor’s Council
 “They could just have me around, and ask me
questions”
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What Hedy Lamarr
Knew
Lamarr learned a lot while standing around and
looking stupid at parties
Fritz Mandl was a munitions maker and his regular
dinner guests included:
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The Invention
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 Lamarr understands major problems in
weapons design
 She has some ideas about unjammable
torpedo guidance systems
 She explains to Antheil the idea of spread
spectrum frequency hopping to prevent
interception and jamming
 She does not know how to control the
sequencing of frequencies
Antheil:
“With a Player Piano Roll!”
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Short transmissions at different frequencies = a kind of
spectrum spreading
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The Fate of the
Invention
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 Out of patriotism, Lamarr and Antheil give the
patent to the Navy and never receive any royalties
 She helps the war effort by selling kisses at
$50,000 each, raising $7M in War Bonds in one
night
 The Navy classifies but does not implement the
invention, reluctant to put player pianos into
torpedoes
 In the 1950s electronic control became possible,
and frequency hopping became the basis for all
secret military communications
 First heavily used for secret communications in the
Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962
The Curious End of Hedy
Lamarr
 Antheil dies in 1959, never seeing the fruit of his
labors
 Lamarr runs through six husbands, several fortunes,
and two shoplifting arrests
 She develops a habit of suing almost anyone who
mentions her name in public, but wins few of the
lawsuits
 In 1997, with spread spectrum technology now being
used to secure millions of cell phone conversations,
Lamarr, 84, is awarded the Electronic Frontier
Foundation Pioneers Award
 “It’s About Time”
Lamarr on Telephone with
her Son
at the EFF Award Ceremony
The Broadcast Spectrum is
Not a Limited Resource!
 Spread spectrum makes it possible to have
essentially unlimited numbers of cell phone calls
 If radio stations can broadcast and rebroadcast at low
power over limited areas using spread spectrum,
there can be essentially unlimited numbers of
stations
 The legal justification for FCC control of content has
been rendered irrelevant by technological advances
that started with Lamarr and Antheil!
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The most beautiful
woman in the
world - Louis
Mayer
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Coda
 In 1996, Corel Corporation, producer of drawing
software Corel Draw8, awards a prize to the
draftsman of this image of Lamarr as the best picture
drawn using their program
 Thinking Lamarr is dead, Corel puts the image on its
box and startup screen
 Lamarr sues Corel for $15M, eventually settles, and
lives out her last years in comfort
 1999: “Films have a certain place in a certain time
period. Technology is forever.”
Hedy Lamarr died January 19, 2000, at the age of 86