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The torpedo control project came to nothing, at least for the time being. The Navy turned it down, criticising that the mechanism was too bulky to be incorporated into an average torpedo. Antheil did not accept this and insisted that their device could be made so small as to fit into a watch. He thought that he knew why the Navy was so negative about it: ’In our patent Hedy and I attempted to better elucidate our mechanism by explaining that certain parts of it worked like the fundamental mechanism of a player piano. Here, undoubtly, we made our mistake. The reverend and brass headed gentleman in Washington who examined our invention read no further than the words ‘player piano’. ‘My god’, I can see them saying, ‘we shall put a player piano into a torpedo.’32
So, Antheil’s explanation is along the line of culture clashes: military technology on the one hand and musical technology on the other and the brass headed gentleman could, of course, not understand, how the latter could be made instrumental for constructing an extremely complicated piece of military technology. But Antheil’s explanation is much too simple, because there were several other problems involved in his and Hedy Lamarr’s invention. One of the main difficulties consisted in developing a suitable antenna which could receive the signals under water. Only very long waves can penetrate the water and even with a very strong and therefore bulky transmitter penetration of only a few yards was possible. Also, |
