Browsing: Navy

In 1947, Harvard’s Mark II ran on roughly 13,000 electromechanical relays, stored numbers across 100 registers, and read instructions from punched paper tape, turning thousands of clicking metal switches into a Navy calculator vulnerable to dust, loose contacts, and one famously misplaced moth

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Harvard’s Mark II began solving test problems in July 1947 with approximately 13,000 electromechanical relays clicking inside it. The machine…

In 1942, Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr and avant-garde composer George Antheil received US Patent 2,292,387 for a frequency-hopping radio system synchronised by a perforated paper roll borrowed from a player piano, a technique the Navy filed away as unworkable and which now underpins every Wi-Fi router, Bluetooth earbud, and GPS receiver on Earth.

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On August 11, 1942, the US Patent Office issued Patent No. 2,292,387 to Hedy Kiesler Markey, the legal name of…

When the U.S. military finally deployed frequency-hopping spread spectrum on Navy ships during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis blockade, the patent that described the technique had expired three years earlier, and its inventor was watching the news in a Los Angeles bungalow without any idea her idea was at sea.

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On August 11, 1942, the U.S. Patent Office granted Patent No. 2,292,387 for a “Secret Communication System” to two inventors…