Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a remarkable story of science history- how a ravishing film star and an avant-garde composer invented spread-spectrum radio, the technology that made wireless phones, GPS systems, and many other devices possible.

Beginning at a Hollywood dinner table, Hedy's Folly tells a wild story of innovation that culminates in U.S. patent number 2,292,387 for a "secret communication system." Along the way Rhodes weaves together Hollywood's golden era, the history of Vienna, 1920s Paris, weapons design, music, a tutorial on patent law and a brief treatise on transmission technology. Narrated with the rigor and charisma we've come to expect of Rhodes, it is a remarkable narrative adventure about spread-spectrum radio's genesis and unlikely amateur inventors collaborating to change the world.

Richard Rhodes is the author or editor of twenty-two books, the most recent of which is The Twilight of the Bomb, the fourth and final installment of a four-volume series on nuclear history. The Creation of the Atomic Bomb earned the Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award in its initial edition. He has earned multiple research and writing fellowships from organizations such as the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Sloan Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing He has worked as a host and correspondent for films on public television's Frontline and American Experience programs, as well as a visiting scholar at Harvard and MIT. He is a frequent lecturer in the United States and internationally, and is a member of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation.