The Best Brush & The Big Brainy Bombshell

My Dear Princess & Dear Fellows,

What you see clutched between Punky's paws is his favouritest brush. Jasper's too. Auslaender gave it to me years ago, and all cats we have ever had since just love it on top of their heads. They love it so much they try and snatch it from our hands. Because of this, it sometimes gets lost - the last time we re-found it, an over-excited kitty had pawed it right under the couch.

Because of this, we've been trying to find another like it for ages, but it is impossible. Until this week. Er Indoors found that it is not really a kitty brush at all, but a brush to clean other brushes. 

We're going to have to order half a dozen more. Look at Punky's face. To lose it again would be a kitty-tragedy.

You can tell from this picture that we are having another quiet day today. This was not the original plan. Er Indoors told me she was going to take me to see "The Dead Pool"* and then out for dinner, but when we looked at seats, the cinema was already booked solid. And anyway, I could tell she was tired from staying up until the early hours watching Harry and Meghan get hitched. She is bonkers like that. 

I am not so fussed about Royal Weddings myself, but they are hard to avoid. I remember my parents (both republicans) booked a holiday in Austria to avoid Charles and Di getting married. That didn't work. We were in some Austrian Gasthof SURROUNDED by old English people. All the tellies in the hotel had to be tuned to the big event and we got a running commentary from the cheeky old fellers, "She's got her claws into 'im! There's no running away now, yer majesty!"

So I let Er Indoors off and instead put quiet films on the telly that she could sleep through. Probably the best film she gently snored through today was a documentary called, "Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story".

It was FASCINATING.

It turns out that Hedy was the big saucy sex-kitten of her day, due to appearing in an Austrian movie called "Ecstasy". After fleeing the Nazis and going to work in Hollywood, her looks and reputation meant she only got sexy bad-girl roles, which she found stifling and silly. You probably know her best for playing Delilah in "Samson and Delilah" alongside Victor Mature**.

Forced to work a gruelling schedule, the studio got her hooked on amphetamines and consequently she had a tempestuous personal life, being married 6 times. As her career started to wane and her looks began to fade, she became a recluse, she just didn't want anyone to see her face anymore.

BUT - and here's the amazing part - in 1990 a reporter started asking questions about her. He discovered that during WW2, she had been upset by the news of U-Boats picking off British shipping. After reading one report of a boat of 300 civilians being sunk, she decided to do something about it.

Here's what she did.

She figured out that the best way to combat U-boats was with radio-controlled torpedoes. The Germans knew this too, and jammed radio frequencies as soon as they detected them.

How to fix this problem? Hedy invented "frequency hopping". Basically it meant that the ship that launched the torpedo, and the torpedo itself would continually change frequencies in parallel. How would they do this? Via what looked like a player-piano roll of 80 different prearranged frequencies on both the ship and the torpedo, meaning as soon as the Germans detected a radio signal, it would move.

Isn't that BRILLIANT?

Unfortunately the military establishment didn't think so. They told her that she shouldn't worry her pretty little head about it and sent her off to sell war bonds. Which she did, because she hated Nazis.

Again, unfortunately the authorities didn't see it that way, and seized her frequency-hopping patent as the work of a "foreign alien". 

Although she wasn't told at the time, her work was shelved until the mid-50's when her patents helped develop new military technology. Frequency-hopping was used during the Bay of Pigs invasion. She only found out years later - by which time her patents had expired.

However, when a reporter investigated all this in the early 90's, her story became huge in the technology community. Her work was printed up in journals and she was given awards - sadly by this time she was a complete recluse and her son had to go and give speeches on her behalf.

It's all very sad. She said she was never taken seriously because of the way she looked and because of "Ecstasy". I'm glad she got to find out how important her invention became though.

Although, actually maybe she never fully knew. She died in 2000 and the movie ended with a note that frequency-hopping is the basis for wi-fi, blue tooth, GPS, mobile phone and satellite communication. Apparently if the US patent office had allowed her to retain her patents, her estate would be worth about 30 billion US$ now.

That's "billion". With a "B".

But Er Indoors missed just about all of that. She slept peacefully through it all and I told her about it later. It warranted sharing, and I'm glad I got to share it again.

S.

* She means "Deadpool 2". I thought it was very sweet that she was willing to accompany me to a film she has no idea about.

** Victor Mature was the Schwarzenegger of his day. One critic unkindly commented that it was the only film he'd seen where the leading man had bigger boobs than the female lead.