  george antheil (; july 8, 1900 â february 12, 1959) was an american avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the modern sounds â musical, industrial, mechanical â of the early 20th century. spending much of the 1920s in europe, antheil returned to the us in the 1930s, and thereafter spent much of his time composing music for films and, eventually, television. as a result of this work, his style became more tonal. a man of diverse interests and talents, antheil was constantly reinventing himself. he wrote magazine articles (one accurately predicted the development and outcome of world war ii), an autobiography, a mystery novel, newspaper and music columns. in 1941 he co-patented a "secret communications system" with actress hedy lamarr that used a code (stored on a punched paper tape) to synchronise random frequencies, referred to as frequency hopping, with a receiver and transmitter. this technique, which is now known as spread spectrum, is now widely used in telecommunications. ==early life== antheil was born george johann carl antheil, and grew up in a family of german immigrants in trenton, new jersey. his father owned a local shoe store in the city. antheil was raised bilingually, writing music, prose, and poetry from an early age, and never formally graduated from high school or college. according to antheil's autobiography the bad boy of music (1945), he was "so crazy about music", that his mother sent him to the countryside where no pianos were available. undeterred, george simply arranged for a local music store to deliver a piano.guy livingston, "george antheil's childhood in trenton", english text of article originally published in german as "der mann hinter dem mythos: george antheils amerikanische kindheit", trans. esther dubielzig. neue zeitschrift fÃ¼r musik 162, no. 5 (septemberâoctober 2001): 18â21. his somewhat unreliable memoir mythologized his origins as a futurist, and emphasized his upbringing near a noisy machine shop and an ominous prison.{
1900_births 1959_deaths 20th-century_classical_composers American_Lutherans American_classical_composers American_film_score_composers American_inventors American_people_of_German_descent American_pianists Deaths_from_myocardial_infarction Futurist_composers Guggenheim_Fellows Musicians_from_New_Jersey Opera_composers People_from_Trenton,_New_Jersey Pupils_of_Ernest_Bloch Pupils_of_Nadia_Boulanger