Hedy Lamarr (né Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) was an Austrian-born
actress and inventor whose contributions to communications technology rival her
lengthy film credits. Nicknamed "The Most Beautiful Woman in Films,"
she escaped Nazi Germany and an unhappy marriage to her first husband,
Friedrich Mandl, by drugging a maid who was hired to spy on her. As fantastic
and unbelievable as this story may seem, Hedy Lamarr's flight to London resulted in a partnership with American composer
George Antheil and a share of a U.S.
patent for a Secret Communication System.
From the beginning, Hedy Lamar followed an unusual path.
Although she received a formal
education from private schools, she acquired most of her technical knowledge through
involvement with Friedrich Mandl's arms manufacturing business, Hirtenberger
Patronen-Fabrik. While accompanying her husband at business meetings and social
functions – events that included prominent fascists such as Benito Mussolini
and Adolph Hitler – Lamarr listened carefully and acquired inside information.
After her escape to London,
Lamarr befriended George Antheil, an experimental composer with a wide range of
interests. While discussing the problem of signal jamming in guided-torpedo
launchings, Lamarr noted that "we're
talking and changing frequencies" all the time. Hence,
the theory of signal-hopping was born. Two years later, on August 11, 1942, the
U.S. Patent Office issued Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil their patent for a Secret
Communication System.
 Lamar's early version of frequency hopping, a type of
modulation technique used in signal transmission, involved the repeated
switching of frequencies during radio transmissions. With frequency-hopping spread
spectrum (FHSS) communications, a transmitter spreads a signal normally found
in a narrow band across a wider spectrum of frequency channels in order to
increase privacy and decrease interference.
Although the U.S.
military did not use Hedy Lamar's invention to defeat the Nazis during World
War II, the technology was used by the U.S. Navy during the Cuban Missile
Crisis of 1962. Sylvania
also embraced Lamar's invention, but after the patent had expired. Hedy Lamar
never made any money from her invention, but was eventually recognized with the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Award in 1997. Today, the technology known
as "spread spectrum" is used in pagers, cell-phones, and internet communications.
Resources:
http://www.inventions.org/culture/female/lamarr.html
http://www.hedylamarr.at/indexe.html
http://www.hedylamarr.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr
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Re: Hedy Lamarr (November 9, 1913 – January 19, 2000)
