Composer, Inventor, Author. He gained fame as an American pianist and composer in the avant-garde genre. Born the son of German immigrants, he never graduated from high school but gained an education living in a bi-lingual household and had a talent for music, playing the piano by age six. Being prominent member of the literary and artistic circles, he toured Europe, living for a time in Paris and Germany, until his music was not accepted by German dictator Adolph Hitler, and he returned to the United States. While in Europe, he married Elizabeth "Boski" Markus, the niece of the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler, and the couple had a son. He wrote over 300 musical pieces including chamber music, numerous film scores in the 1930s, operas, and symphonies. His trademark work was the 1924 work "Le Ballet Mecanique," which incorporated sounds from machines like airplane propellers and car horns. With technical failures, he never had these "instruments" concurrently played as planned in 1924. His original 1924 piece was accomplished with the use of computers in 1999 and played in sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall. After being a student at the Curtis Institute of Music, the school sponsored him for nearly two decades in the development of this avant-garde genre music, yet by 1939 he abandoned the project. At a dinner party given by Janet Gaynor, he met Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr. Shortly after this meeting, Lamarr and Antheil invented and patented a secret communications system, U.S. Patent 2,292,387. The patent application was dated June 10, 1941, and approved on August 11, 1942. The purpose of the system was to provide reliable and jam proof control of long-range torpedoes. The system involved the use of the frequency hopping principles of Spread Spectrum radio. However, the system was never used in wartime, but 20 years later was put to effective use by the United States Navy in torpedo guidance systems, and 40 years before it was permitted by the FCC to be used in commercial radios. Among other things, Spread Spectrum forms the basic principle that allows the use of simultaneous multi-channel operation used in modern digital cellular telephone systems. Spread spectrum is the basis for the communications security of the strategic $25 billion MILSAT Defense communications system. For this invention, he and Lamarr were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. As an author, he published his 1945 autobiography, "The Bad Boy of Music"; the 1940 book addressing the war in Europe, "The Shape of the War to Come"; a 1937 book, "Every Man his Own Detective;" and dozens of articles for magazines and nationally syndicated newspapers on the subjects of politics, music, personal relationships and hormones. He is buried in the family plot with his parents; an older brother, who was killed during World War II, when the plane that he was a passenger was shot down by the Soviet Union; a niece; and the family's nanny, Anna Neumann.
Composer, Inventor, Author. He gained fame as an American pianist and composer in the avant-garde genre. Born the son of German immigrants, he never graduated from high school but gained an education living in a bi-lingual household and had a talent for music, playing the piano by age six. Being prominent member of the literary and artistic circles, he toured Europe, living for a time in Paris and Germany, until his music was not accepted by German dictator Adolph Hitler, and he returned to the United States. While in Europe, he married Elizabeth "Boski" Markus, the niece of the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler, and the couple had a son. He wrote over 300 musical pieces including chamber music, numerous film scores in the 1930s, operas, and symphonies. His trademark work was the 1924 work "Le Ballet Mecanique," which incorporated sounds from machines like airplane propellers and car horns. With technical failures, he never had these "instruments" concurrently played as planned in 1924. His original 1924 piece was accomplished with the use of computers in 1999 and played in sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall. After being a student at the Curtis Institute of Music, the school sponsored him for nearly two decades in the development of this avant-garde genre music, yet by 1939 he abandoned the project. At a dinner party given by Janet Gaynor, he met Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr. Shortly after this meeting, Lamarr and Antheil invented and patented a secret communications system, U.S. Patent 2,292,387. The patent application was dated June 10, 1941, and approved on August 11, 1942. The purpose of the system was to provide reliable and jam proof control of long-range torpedoes. The system involved the use of the frequency hopping principles of Spread Spectrum radio. However, the system was never used in wartime, but 20 years later was put to effective use by the United States Navy in torpedo guidance systems, and 40 years before it was permitted by the FCC to be used in commercial radios. Among other things, Spread Spectrum forms the basic principle that allows the use of simultaneous multi-channel operation used in modern digital cellular telephone systems. Spread spectrum is the basis for the communications security of the strategic $25 billion MILSAT Defense communications system. For this invention, he and Lamarr were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. As an author, he published his 1945 autobiography, "The Bad Boy of Music"; the 1940 book addressing the war in Europe, "The Shape of the War to Come"; a 1937 book, "Every Man his Own Detective;" and dozens of articles for magazines and nationally syndicated newspapers on the subjects of politics, music, personal relationships and hormones. He is buried in the family plot with his parents; an older brother, who was killed during World War II, when the plane that he was a passenger was shot down by the Soviet Union; a niece; and the family's nanny, Anna Neumann.
Bio by: Linda Davis
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