“Hedy Lamarr made your smartphone possible,” Jennifer Bisset reports for CNET. “You might know her as the ‘most beautiful woman in the world,’ a tag she always hated. Lamarr got her start in a 1933 Czech movie called Ecstasy. Then, she struck out for America, where she starred in Tortilla Flat, Samson and Delilah and other movies made during Hollywood’s Golden Age.”
“But Lamarr found Tinseltown shallow. She avoided parties, noodling instead on drafting boards she had installed at home,” Bisset reports. “She improved the design of traffic lights, invented a tablet that dissolved into a soft drink, and reimagined the wings of a fuel-efficient plane for Howard Hughes.”
“Her most enduring invention: a form of frequency hopping that was the forerunner of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS, all of which sit in your phone.,” Bisset reports. “‘When we close our eyes, we don’t see a female inventor. We see Thomas Edison,’ says Alexandra Dean, explaining why she chose to direct Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, a new documentary on Lamarr’s life. ‘This actress had done this groundbreaking invention and never been recognized.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Amazing! Lamarr was obviously very beautiful, talented, and smart – a killer combination!
That technology helped us win World War II and saved a lot of lives. For a woman of Jewish heritage that is quite ironic.
It didn’t really help with WWII.
Actually, it did. OSS and other covert agencies during WWII used frequency-hopping radios (in addition to other techniques) for secure communications near the end of the war.
Those were Hedy times.
It’s quite a bit over the top to say she invented Wifi. If we’re going to stretch, let’s just all agree that Nikola Tesla did it.
Tesla for sure, but she built upon and expanded. If not her, who after her?
She did not invent Wi-fi, but invented a technology key to its current implementation. She’s one of the giants on whose shoulders modern communications engineers stand.
Well Steve Jobs didn’t invent the Macintosh, either. He did head the project.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr
“At the beginning of World War II, Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes, which used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers. ***Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s***, …the principles of their work are arguably incorporated into Bluetooth technology, and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi.”
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_spectrum
Fuck me, nignog – you got Google Search too, like the rest of us Jews? Thanks for the history lesson. And remember that the States were built on the back of the Irish, and NOT the blacks.
The Irish didn’t get to America in numbers until the 1840’s, after the potato famine, (Scot Irish are not the same).
The Navy didn’t use it during the war, but the Army Signal Corps did – after the patent was granted- for secure communications.
https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201106/physicshistory.cfm
“It’s Hedley…”
For the younger generation without a clue, a “Blazing Saddles” reference (a 1974 Mel Brooks comedy).
I’ve seen Blazing Saddles a zillion times… what’s the reference?
If you have to ask then you have not really seen the movie. So many subtle gags hiding in plain sight.
The best of all the Mel Brooks movies. Young Frankenstein was second.
The sad part is you could not make Blazing Saddles today- they would never let you.
Hedy or Hedley, no matter. Beauty and brains …
For the racy, the daring and the over 18, you can watch Hedy Lamarr’s famous early film ‘Ecstasy’ or ‘Ekstase’ in its entirety (versus mere clips) HERE:
FYI: The infamous scene has been highly exaggerated in the press. But for it’s time, it was a ground breaking film. The camera alone was innovative.
If memory serves her husband later tried to buy up all the prints, but he obviously did not succeed.
Love the post. Feel free to check mine out as well on her: https://glamntech.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/celebrating-womens-history-month-in-technology-hedy-lamarr/