George Antheil’s autobiography, Bad Boy of Music, is quite entertaining. In it he recounts his adventures related to this patent. If I recall correctly (I read it decades ago but I think I’m right here), he describes a close and co-equal collaboration with his friend Hedy Lamarr on this invention. Therefore I think these remarks by the author:
‘Since the actual invention is a player-piano-like mechanism, and since experimental musician George Antheil had expertise in the inner workings of player pianos, and further since Hedy Lamarr evidently had no such expertise, it may be more appropriate to call the Lamarr-Antheil patent “Antheil’s patent.”’
Moreover, Hedy Lamarr was the one who had the idea of using FHSS, not being aware about the unknown patents where the same idea had been proposed earlier.
The contribution of Antheil has been in the practical implementation of her idea, so it would be ridiculous to call it "Antheil's patent".
There are plenty of inventions like this, where one inventor has the idea on which the invention is based, without having enough practical experience in that domain to complete the invention, so a second inventor with appropriate experience is brought in, who may be the author of the bulk of the practical implementation, but who is not the author of the original idea.
In such cases, both are rightly called inventors, as none of them could have completed the invention without the other.
What Antheil says and what actually happened may, in reality, diverge considerably. Antheil evidently knew exactly nothing about what was going on, except for his knowledge of player-piano mechanisms. The invention is what it is -- nothing more and nothing less -- than a cumbersome mechanical mechanism that had no further influence on anyone. His autobiographical account of events is highly dubious.
The key to inventorship, as defined by a patent, is whether or not someone contributes something to the intellectual conception of at least one of the claims. Unless the "practical implementation" makes its way to the claims, the "practical implementer" is not an inventor. Note the drawings that accompany the Lamarr patent -- anything of substance was contributed by their helper (a tenured professor of RF engineering at CalTech), who is NOT listed as an inventor.
So I ask again: given that Hedy Lamarr made no pretense of knowledge of the player-piano mechanism, and that each claim is tightly interwoven with player-piano mechanisms, what, exactly, did Hedy contribute? This is, of course, a rhetorical question; we shall never know the answer.
‘Since the actual invention is a player-piano-like mechanism, and since experimental musician George Antheil had expertise in the inner workings of player pianos, and further since Hedy Lamarr evidently had no such expertise, it may be more appropriate to call the Lamarr-Antheil patent “Antheil’s patent.”’
are inappropriate and unjustified.