Keeps On Ticking

Like the TIMEX watch, our "Storyteller Extroadinaire".....Ellouise Schotteler...keeps on keeping on.....with her fabulous Storytelling .....IN SPITE ...of a recently broken shoulder!

OUCH!

"The surgery went well on the 15th and recovery has been easier than I expected which has been a good surprise.

So, now I am returning to the past to get myself back to normal.
Working on a new story about WWI nurses in France - a different group who were right on the edge of the battlefield - again lost in the shadows of history. I have applied for the 2017 Capital Fringe and I hope the new story will be accepted.

Ellouise     Don     Letty

She went on to write........

Almost ten years ago Donald and Letty and Jim and I bumped into each other at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN.

Since then we have had a meet up every year. - a great connection.

This yearI walked into the filling tent the first day and bumped into Donald and Lettie.A great way to start the week-end. Next day we took time to have a hamburger together at the local Wendys - a place to sit down and talk.

Ellouise

Hedwig Keisler

Like you, I have the greatest grand kids on earth!

The two youngest are in high school, so naturally. they're no longer as interested in their old grandaddy's tall tales as they once were. Even though my "tall tales" were (almost) always the Gospel truth!

Recognizing that today's youngsters are never very far away from their cell phones.  I decided that my topic for this Thanksgiving's story for the kids would be about the inventor of the cell phone.

Well, to be technically correct, there was no ONE inventer.....but many people contributed....however, if it weren't for one person....around 1942 or so.....our present cell phones would not exist!

Now those of us....long in tooth...and soon to graduate from this green earth...all  know who this inventor was. But to  the young people of today, the name  Hedwig Keisler... means nothing. 

But, of course, back then, the term "cell phone" meant nothing to us!

It didn't mean anything to Hedwig either, because the technology was meant for something else:

To allow our torpedoes NOT to be "misdirected" by the existing Nazi technology!  

This was all happening during the early 1940's of course.

It would have worked perfectly and I would love to write that this "frequency shifting" technology contributed mightily to our eventual victory in WW2.

But, it didn't.

Our government simply filed the technology somewhere in Washington and forgot about it.

Meanwhile our torpedoes keep missing Nazi ships.

Hedwig went on to other things and was very successful and famous for awhile. But as old age....and society's.....fickleness took its toll....Hedwig ended up broke.
Even going hungry....and resorting to stealing (shoplifting)....for food.

Hedwig's invention was finally resurrected and used by the US Navy in the 1960's....but no royalties were ever paid because Hedwig GAVE it to the government during WW2.

 Several years after Kiesler's death...the same formula which made the invaluable tool that is in you pocket or purse right now...the cell phone......was made possible.

Thanks to that hungry bum who died penniless on the streets of Florida.

We all knew that  famous inventor ... 

as the once "Most Beautiful Woman in the World".....by her stage name..

Hedy Lamarr


-Ed

Hedwig Kiesler  AKA Hedy Lamar