the aircraft observing and controlling the torpedo was a risk factor in that it could be shot down by the target ship.

Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil did not pursue their invention further. However, in 1957 engineers at the Sylvania Electronic Systems Division in Buffalo, N.Y, took up the concept again. They developed a system, which was, of course, operated electronically rather than with piano rolls and ultimately became a staple of secure military communication. In 1962 the firm installed it on ships sent to blockade Cuba. This happened about three years after the Lamarr-Antheil patent had expired. Subsequent patents in frequency changes, which are generally unrelated to torpedo radio control, refer to the Lamarr-Antheil patent as the generic patent. Also, the concept is now the basis of the principal anti-jamming device used, for example, in the U.S. Government’s Milstar defence communication satellite system.³³

The Antheil-Lamarr case study suggests that it can be well worth trying to make use of concepts and devices which originate from a completely different technological context. Although a lot of refining had to be done to make a technology work in the new context, a player piano did prove to have a lot in common with a system of torpedo radio control and with military communication.

VII

What, then, is the outcome of all this? Looking at our case studies in a more systematic way it shows that the actors involved can be put into various categories: physicists and electrical engineers – in some cases the difference is difficult to determine – like Termen, Ranger and Kock. They had received an academic degree in physics and/or electrical engineering and were also accomplished musicians. In the case of Miessner there is a tandem: Benjamin F. as an independent inventor and radio engineer and his brother Otto as a professor of music. George Antheil was a musician with an interest in electrical engineering and electronics, not an unusual combination and particularly wide-spread in the fifties with the rise and diffusion of analogue electronic studios in Europe and elsewhere. Ranger was a military man and high-ranking officer. Apart from being an army officer and inventor Ranger was also a businessman who wanted to make a living by manufacturing electric musical instruments. But in this and in his efforts to market a magnetophone in the late 1940s he was not particularly successful. On the other hand he was a keen inventor with an ambition to be a pioneer in his field. In these cases he did not put marketing considerations first: his development of the Rangertone organ, which was surely not designed as an instrument to make much money with, is evidence of this.

As to the relationship between music technology and military technology some of the music engineers of the 1920s and 1930s worked in electrical and electronics technology that could be applied to musical instruments as well as to security and military purposes: there were different applications of the same or very similar physical and technical principles. This applies to Termen and his ‘radio watchman’