Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Naria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, Austria. By the time she was a teenager, she had decided to drop out of school and seek fame as an actress. She first appeared in a German film in 1930. She was attractive and talented enough to be in three more films in 1931, but it was her controversial film 'Ecstasy' that brought her worldwide fame as an actress.

In 1937 she fled from her country and secretly moved to Hollywood, where she reinvented herself. She changed her name to Hedy Lamarr, with the nick name 'the most beautiful woman in films'. However, Lamarr defied the leading-lady stereotype by also pursuing an interest in mathematics and engineering. She soon took up inventing. Her earliest inventions included an improved traffic stoplight and a tablet that would dissolve in water to create a carbonated drink.

With the ongoing World War, Lamarr was inspired to contribute the war effort. She designed a radio guidance system for torpedoes. With the help of composer George Antheil, whom she met in 1940, she discovered a way to break up signals and transmit them over different frequencies. Using a method similar to the way player piano work, they designed a frequency-hopping system that would continually change the radio signals sent to a torpedo. While others, including Nikola Tesla, had explored similar ideas of frequency hopping, Lamarr and Antheil obtained a patent for their invention in 1942 for what would become known as spread-spectrum technology.

Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology during the war, it was used during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. For decades Lamarr’s technology remained behind the scenes, but ultimately it led to the creation of today’s spread-spectrum communication technology, such as Wi-Fi networks, mobile phones, GPS and Bluetooth technologies.

Lamarr and Antheil eventually received several awards for their lifetime creative achievements that contributed so much to society. They were inducted into the national investors Hall of Fame in 2014, after her death in 2000.

the unusual career of a famous actress

She was known as "the most beautiful woman in films".

Frequency hopping means to rapidly switch frequencies to avoid interception of messages.

She first appeared in a German film in 1930.

She designed a radio guidance system for torpedoes.