George Antheil

Antheil's experiments as a composer involved mechanical timing and player pianos. That experience became useful when he and Hedy Lamarr devised a frequency-hopping communications system, with synchronised changes intended to resist interference. Their patent was not a ready-made invention of Wi-Fi, and wartime adoption did not follow as hoped. The revealing connection is narrower and more interesting: a musical problem of keeping machines together could suggest a method for keeping radio signals together.