How often do you think ‘Thank God for Wi-Fi’? Well it’s not God you should be thanking, it’s Hollywood bombshell Hedy Lamarr.
Although better known for being the most beautiful woman in the world, you have the brains of Hedy Lamarr to thank every time you use your mobile phone, a Wi-Fi connection or any Bluetooth technology.
Hedy, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna in 1913, was keenly interested in science when she was a child, yet ended up being known as a star of Hollywood, featuring in films such as “Samson and Delilah” (1949), “Boom Town” (1940), “The Conspirators” (1944) and the Czechoslovakian film “Ecstasy” (1933).
She lived a life of sex and science, and although a brilliant actress, Lamarr’s greatest achievement and long-term contribution to society was not her role in Hollywood, but as an inventor of the very thing our generation cannot live without.
Along with composer George Antheil, she co-invented early techniques used for spread-spectrum communications and frequency hopping.
These technologies were originally designed and used for military purposes where they aided communication for decades.
Nowadays they form the core of many of today’s most popular wireless devices.
During the 1930’s, Lamarr witnessed first hand the potential dangers that came with the rise of the Nazi party whilst she was married to her first husband, Austrian arms manufacturer Friedrich Mandle. After escaping that marriage and moving to California, she became a Hollywood star and between shots and takes, began her practice of inventing things.
She viewed it as a hobby; she didn’t have to work on ideas, they just came to her naturally. Uninterested in partying or drinking, Hedy created an ‘inventor’s corner’ in her Hollywood home where she would focus on her projects between filming movies. With only a few movies to film a year, each one taking a month to film, Lamarr had plenty of time on her hands to devote to her fondness of science and technology.
Although few of her ideas came to fruition, the sinking of a cruise ship by Nazi U-boats in 1940 inspired her to action. She devised the idea of a radio signal that would hop between radio frequencies, preventing it from being jammed. This allowed airplanes to safely guide nearby torpedoes without being jammed.
After working alongside eachother on their idea for several months, Lamarr and Antheil sent a description of it to the inventors council in December 1940.
2 years later in August 1942, they were granted a patent for their “secret communication system” which they then gave to the U.S. Navy for no cost.
Frustratingly, the military did nothing with the idea or patent and nothing was implemented until the 1960’s, long after the patent had expired.
The military completely underestimated her brains, and instead focused on her body, advising that she’d contribute more to the war effort as a pinup, selling kisses. But she was so much more than that, and their invention has become the core technology behind Wi-Fi networks as well as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) cellphones and Bluetooth.
Despite the majority of us thinking multiple times a day ‘What on earth would we do without Wi-Fi?’ hardly anyone knows of the important contribution that Hedy Lamarr gave to this technology that nowadays we couldn’t live without.
Dubbing Lamarr’s innovative creation ‘spread spectrum technology’, The Electronic Frontier Foundation honoured her with its Pioneer Award in 1997, 3 years before her death.
Her invention was inspired by secret communications to win a war, but has given the world so much more.
With thanks to https://cynthiafountaine.com/2018/03/26/hedy-lamarr/ for the image.
