You may very well recognise this name. Hedy Lamarr was a popular actress in during the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood (1930s, 1940s, 1950s). Often referred to as ‘the most beautiful woman in film’, she was a talented actress, starring in many films, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
But this is not the main reason we should know who she is. Hedy Lamarr was a supremely intelligent woman who invented a pioneering frequency hopping technique that was a huge development in the field of wireless communication, paving the way for some of the technologies we use even today!
Born on November 9th, 1914 in Vienna, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler showed early interest in acting, and had parts in several Austrian, German, and Czech films. It is also understood her inventive nature and intellectual curiosity came from going out on walks with her father where he would explain how the technology they saw around them worked.
She married her first husband at the age of 18. He was an arms manufacturer, and Hedy would often accompany him to business meetings and dinners with people involved in military technology and sciences, and it is through being present at these meetings that Hedy gained further insight into applied sciences and understandings of weapons systems, knowledge that would prove helpful later in life.
Fleeing her marriage, Hedy left her home country and headed for Paris, and then London, where she met the head of MGM, and it was this meeting that would lead her to Hollywood, where she changed her name to Hedy Lamarr, and began acting in Hollywood films.
Generally shunning the life of fame, it was in her spare time that she would focus her attentions on science and technology, and her inventions.
As with all inventions, there were several failures before success came – Hedy went down the routes of an improved traffic light, or a pellet that would dissolve in water to create a fizzy drink (Lamarr said of this particular invention that it tasted like Alka Seltzer).
With the world embroiled in another war attentions turned to how to help the war effort. Lamarr tried to join the National Inventors Council, but it is reported that she was told her best contribution to the effort would be to use her celebrity status to sell war bonds.
Still tinkering away with her inventions, Hedy Lamarr applied her knowledge of military technology to the problem of signal jamming.
Now during the Second World War, naval forces would use radio-controlled torpedoes (still a relatively new technology itself at this point), as well as broadcast signals and messages over radio that could also be intercepted by the enemy.
The idea Lamarr came up with to prevent this, was to use multiple channels to broadcast the signal, instead of a single channel. Signals would be broadcast and jump at random across the multiple channels. Now those sending the signal and those receiving the signal would know in advance which channels would be used to broadcast the message, and as a result, they would be able to decode it. But for someone on the outside, without the correct combination of channels? Well it would just be gibberish and sound like noise.
This was known as ‘frequency hopping’.
Working with her close friend, pianist George Antheil, to create and implement this, the pair filed for a patent which was granted on August 11th, 1942. Hedy filed for the patent under the name Hedy Keisler Markey, with Markey being the surname she took following her second marriage.
Remarkably, the invention was never actually adopted during the Second World War!
There were doubts about how to implement their technology, and – according to an NPR programme on Hedy Lamarr – the US Navy were reluctant to consider an invention from someone not actually in the armed forces.
It was not until the late 1950s, when the original patent was about to expire, that this technology really started to be looked at seriously.
From there, frequency hopping grew as part of the development of technology known as ‘spread spectrum’.
It is this spread spectrum tech that forms the foundation for a lot of our communications to this day. So Lamarr’s contribution to that cannot be overlooked. The development of this technology led us to things like Wi-fi, Bluetooth, even mobile phones.
What is remarkable about Hedy Lamarr is that she was self-taught. Inventing something as a hobby that has had long standing impact, in a time where she was simply regarded as just a beautiful woman. It makes you wonder how things would have progressed had she been allowed to contribute her intelligence and learning to the war efforts.
When, in the 90s, Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil finally started to received recognition for their invention and received the Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (1997), Lamarr responded, “It’s about time.”
Hedy Lamarr passed away on January 19th, 2000.
In 2014 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.