Monthly Archives: January 2009

Can you imagine postage stamps being used as currency? That is exactly what happened during the Civil War. When the Civil War started most people believed that it would end quickly. We all know differently. As the war dragged on, people went into panic mode and started hoarding their silver and gold coins. The country needed metal for weapons and machinery and so they restricted the production of new copper coinage. This metal hoarding on both ends caused a metal shortage.

To help with the problem, Congress passed a law permitting the use of postage stamps as currency! Huh? You can imagine the headaches this caused both those that used them, and the Post Office. The Post Office didn’t enjoy selling stamps as legal tender, and when customers came in with dirty or damaged stamps, the post office refused to replace them. After all, stamps were not made to be handled from person to person, and as small as they were, they were easily lost. One inventor tried to remedy the problem when he invented a protective encasing for the stamps and that helped for while. But the demand for the stamps increased, thus causing yet another shortage. What to do? US Treasurer F.E. Spinner, asked the government to produce fractional currency and on July 17, 1862, Abe Lincoln approved the Postage Currency Act. This act approved bills of five, ten, twenty-five, and fifty cents be produced and put in circulation.

The bills were much smaller than the ones we use today, in fact, they were postage stamp size. I might date myself here, but they looked like the sheet of small little stamps my mom used to get from the A & P. The first fractional bills produced were easy to counterfeit, so they came up with the idea of producing new ones that were more colorful and were printed on both sides. The bills came to be known as “shinplasters” because the soldiers were paid in fractional bills and they stuffed these bills into their boots to keep their feet warm. Some bills survive today.

I once saw a great movie with Loretta Young called “Cause for Alarm!” a 1951 movie about a woman who frantically needs to get a hold of a letter, her crazy husband wrote and sent out to the prosecutor. Her husband commits suicide, and the letter incriminates her as his killer. A terrific movie. But what am I getting at? I thought about this movie when I read about Albert Einstein’s greatest mistake. In 1939 Einstein wrote a letter to FDR when he became concerned that Germany had been doing some nuclear research that could lead to Germany’s creation of “extremely powerful bombs of a new type.” In the letter he encouraged research be expedited in the US, or else the Germans would do it first. He also encouraged the US secure an ample supply of Uranium.

Well this letter made the US scramble and ultimately led to what is known as the “The Manhattan Project.” The Manhattan Project was basically an arms race. Did you know that there were 10,000 people involved in this project and only a handful knew what they were trying to accomplish?

By 1945 some scientists were concerned with the power of the atomic bomb, and by now they knew Germany wasn’t building any bombs of their own. Einstein wrote FDR another letter urging him to meet with those opposing scientist, but the letter got there too late. FDR died before he read it, and on August 6, 1945 the US dropped the bomb in Hiroshima. And we all know what happened there.

Einstein is quoted as saying that the first letter he sent FDR was “the single greatest mistake,” of his life. I assume the loss of life with his creation weighed him down. I’ve not done extensive research on WWII, but I know how hard it was for America to fight multiple fronts at once, and Japan was a strong foe. It doesn’t justify it, but war is ugly, and there was nothing Einstein could’ve done differently to change that…bomb or no bomb.

You might know Jack Johnson (1878-1947) as the first black heavyweight champion of the world (1908-1915), but did you know he also patented a wrench in 1922? However, Johnson is known more for his boxing abilities, and for all the controversy he caused back in the day, than he is for his patent.

Can you believe that because he beat a couple of white boxers, riots soon followed through-out the United States? Some were celebration “riots” by blacks, while the whites tried to stop the celebrations, and in fact, police intercepted some lynchings. It’s hard to even imagine this. But someone once told me that in order to understand history, you have to see it through the eyeglass of the time. Johnson was known for his love of white women, in fact, he married 2 white women in a time white and black marriages were illegal in many states. When he married his second wife, he was forced out of the country, when two ministers in the south recommended Johnson be lynched.

In 1920 Johnson returned to the US and opened up a club in Harlem and sold it 3 years later to a gangster Oweny Madden who later renamed the club to “The Cotton Club.” Johnson had a few fights in Mexico and later returned to the US to only be arrested for “transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes.” He did one year in the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth. It was in prison when he came up with the idea of a tool to help tighten loosening fastening devices, the wrench. Several proposals to grant Johnson a posthumous Presidential pardon have been requested, the latest being one to President George W. Bush. This one has passed the House, and a companion bill is going through the Senate.

Those of you, who know me, know that I am not only a history buff, but a classic movie buff as well. Visit cine classics, my blog on classic film for more on that. So why am I saying this? Well, because this little history secret has do with a beautiful classic movie star named Hedy Lamarr. Hedy is remembered mostly for her roles in classic film from the 30’s and 40’s. One in particular comes to mind, a pre-code film where Hedy has a nude scene, scandalous for the day, in the movie “Ecstasy.” The movie was condemned by the pope and banned in the United States. The movie tamed by today’s standards, was considered immoral back in the day of Hayes Enforcement. Hedy wasn’t just looks, and she had that plenty, but she also had brains.

Hollywood called her “the most beautiful woman in the world.” It was WW II that changed Hedy and she decided to use her brains to help her adopted country, America. In the summer of 1942 Lamarr got together with composer George Atheil and patented a secret communications system to prevent the jamming of radio-controlled torpedoes. Hedy came up with this idea on the back of a cocktail napkin: frequency hopping. Basically its radio signals that constantly switched frequencies to make interception impossible.

It was an invention ahead of its time and it wasn’t used until the Cuban missile crisis some years later. Today this is called spread spectrum technology and is an important part of cell phones systems, satellite encryption, and other modern technologies.

Hedy once said, “Any girl can be glamorous; all you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” She fooled the world with her looks, but shocked the world with her brains. You go girl!

For more on Hedy click here