Hedy Lamarr: Radio Guidance System (later becoming GPS and Wi-Fi)
Austrian-born, American actress Hedy Lamarr, who in addition to becoming a star of the Silver Screen during the Golden Age of Hollywood, collaborated with composer George Antheil to create a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes. At first, Lamarr’s brilliant mind was ignored, and her beauty took center stage when she was discovered by director Max Reinhardt at age 16. She studied acting with Reinhardt in Berlin and was in her first small film role by 1930, in a German film called Geld auf der Straβe (“Money on the Street”). However, it wasn’t until 1932 that Lamarr gained name recognition as an actress. After a few years in the industry and one failed relationship, she met Howard Hughes. Hughes helped to fuel the innovator in Lamarr, giving her a small set of equipment to use in her trailer on set. While she had an inventing table set up in her house, the small set allowed Lamarr to work on inventions between takes.
In 1940, Lamarr met George Antheil at a dinner party. Antheil was another quirky yet clever force to be reckoned with. Antheil recalled, “Hedy said that she did not feel very comfortable, sitting there in Hollywood and making lots of money when things were in such a state.” After her marriage to Mandl, she had knowledge on munitions and various weaponry that would prove beneficial. And so, Lamarr and Antheil began to tinker with ideas to combat the axis powers. The two came up with an extraordinary new communication system used with the intention of guiding torpedoes to their targets in war. The system involved the use of “frequency hopping” amongst radio waves, with both transmitter and receiver hopping to new frequencies together. The Navy pretended it wasn’t interested in the technology, but of course, it was. They stole Lamarr and Antheil’s idea, classified the patent and, by the 1960s, had begun to incorporate the technology into a host of new weapons systems. The technology they developed would one day form the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communication systems.