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."
As the National Portrait Gallery acquires a film poster of Hedy Lamarr, it’s worth reflecting on her double life as an actress and a pioneering inventor
@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.
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.
“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.”
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 .🙏
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!
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).
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
The scientists of the Lamarr Institute are dedicated to research and development in the field of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
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.
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 🙁
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.
Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr (Ziegfeld Girl, Samson and Delilah) was known as the world’s most beautiful woman – Snow White and Cat Woman were both based on
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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in reply to Paul • • •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.
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in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •“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.”
No, Hedy Lamarr did not ‘make’ Wi-Fi - Kimberly Moravec - Medium
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in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •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.
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Promega Lamarr Engineering Center · 2798 S Fish Hatchery Rd, Madison, WI 53711, United States
Promega Lamarr Engineering Center · 2798 S Fish Hatchery Rd, Madison, WI 53711, United StatesZeichenTaten
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •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.
Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence » Lamarr Institute
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Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story ~ About Hedy Lamarr Documentary | American Masters | PBS
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