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Born in 1914, Hedy Lamarr was a famous American actress who pioneered the technology that would lead to WiFi, GPS, cell phones & Bluetooth communication.

Lamarr was brilliant. Among many fascinating inventions, she developed a new communication system with composer George Antheil that used “frequency hopping” among radio waves.

Once called the “most beautiful woman in the world," Lamarr is now remembered as "the mother of Wi-Fi."

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/thank-world-war-ii-era-film-star-your-wi-fi-180971584/ #science #history #HistoryRemix
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

if you are going to make a point of her nationality, please also mention that she was born in Austria and moved to the US as an adult.
in reply to Paul

@PaulDelaustro These posts always start much longer & details are lost to fit.

Lamarr's story is especially fascinating & I encourage everyone to read more. She is truly incredible. And yes, she was an Austrian-American Jewish immigrant.
@Paul
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

and Tesla experimented with it it heavily giving her credit at the time, only to still be ignored at the time...
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

She named one of the conference rooms in our previous office (Grace Hopper, Nikolai Tesla and Alan Turing were some of the others)
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Bluetooth uses frequency hopping. Original WIFI (802.11 back in 1990s) did use frequency hopping. GPS does not use frequency hopping. I think GSM cellular (back in the day) used frequency hopping. We belittle her amazing accomplishments by exaggerating them. They don't need to be exaggerated: they're awesome already.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Kimberly Moravec comes to a different conclusion: https://kimberlymoravec.medium.com/no-hedy-lamarr-did-not-make-wi-fi-92ac4956b9e

“So Hedy Lamarr wasn’t involved in the development of the Wi-Fi protocol, she wasn’t the first to think up frequency hopping, and frequency hopping isn’t used in modern Wi-Fi in any case.”
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

who new? Breakthrough nude scene AND the mother of the remote workplace
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Thanks for sharing about Lamarr and such a fascinating women with ethereal beauty .I didn’t know about her at all and after you shared I did read something about her and shared not on Twitter but with my school and college friends group .To my surprise none were aware .🙏
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Fascinating how she managed to combine these two seemingly contradictory professions. “Radio wave nerd” wouldn’t be the first thing coming to mind when seeing her photos… What an interesting person. Thanks for this!
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Beautiful tribute by @malonda:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g6QKoWWK2M

#HedyLamarr
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Amazing woman. And not to in any way diminish her contributions to science and Hollywood, she's also the defacto Mother of Corel Draw (although the matter wound up in litigation as they used her likeness without permission).
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

dang she is gorgeous, but that is so interesting and cool about her inventions. Thank you Hedy for my cell phone I guess!
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

there’s a nice documentary about her: Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

also invented those little pills that were supposed to make a fizzy drink when you added water. They weren't very good but I loved them because they were cool.

Point being she invented pretty much her whole adult life. At one point she quipped she was only still making movies to pay for the inventing.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

This ia a myth. She and Antheil didn't pioneer "fequency hopping" technology, which already existed before WWI. They did develop a system during WWII, but, although grated a patent, it was never realised. It is also not the system used in WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth or whatever.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

The frequency hopping was used to avoid the guidance systems in torpedos from being jammed in WW2. It used a mechanical system to synch frequencies, but it was the genesis of Bluetooth.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

We named our dog "Hedy" after Lamarr. She hasn't made any breakthroughs on communication technology yet, but she is really good at puzzle toys, and learned to open doors.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

yup, Austria eventually recognised her. There’s a road named after her in Vienna and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information installed a quantum telescope on the roof of the University of Vienna, which they named after her.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Such a deeply impactful legacy, in hindsight, one century later. Very impressive.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

My understanding is that Lamarr invented a feature called "slow frequency hopping," which if used with other encryption techniques can make it a bit harder to decrypt an encoded message. If I got that right, it's a clever idea but not as fundamental as you suggest. Can someone correct me if I got that wrong? Thanks!
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

It should also be mentioned that Hedy Lamarr sided with the Allies in 1937 as an opponent of Nazism.

In Germany, the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at TU Dortmund University and Fraunhofer IAIS was named after her in 2022. (https://lamarr-institute.org)

As a side note, Disney is said to have modeled his "Snow White" after her, and the comic book character "Catwoman" was also inspired by her.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Lamarr's frequency hopping idea was brilliant and indeed led to improvements in secure radio communications as well as WiFi but she was a bit ahead of her time. The technology available in her day was mainly vacuum tube/valves & relays. Frequency hopping needed solid state electronics- transistors- which were not invented until 1947 for the speed and frequency stability needed to make it work. But work it did and produced vast improvements in the field.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

ionosphere is really onisphere - accessible via short wave radios
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

I have read that she felt she was not taken very seriously at first by the scientific and military communities because she was beautiful and of course, also a woman 🙁
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

what an incredible person she was. It’s not as if spread spectrum radio is easy to do today let alone in the 40s before transistors. I can’t believe no one has made a movie of her war time exploits. It would be A fitting tribute.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

highly recommend the documentary Bombshell.

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/bombshell-hedy-lamarr-story-documentary/9906/
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

are you aware of any good biographies on her? I actually have “find a Hedy Lamarr biography” in my reading list.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

There's a story ready to be written about Hedy Lamarr and Ada Lovelace meeting.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

One of my favorite anecdotes of history. She was clearly a trailblazer and amazingly talented person.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

What a magnificent package altogether!
Hedy Lamarr, Mother of Wi-Fi. Who knew!
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

In Austria, our new renovated parliament, we got a new room "The hedi Lamarr Saal"
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

and she was never taken seriously and her patents were allowed to lapse with no royalties paid because she committed the sins of not only being a woman but also being a beautiful one.

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