Hedy Lamarr: Actor and the inventor of a wireless communications technique still in use today
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NewScientist
Aron, Jacob
Abstract
Hedy Lamarr, a Hollywood actor, was born in Austria in 1914 to a wealthy Jewish family. The family fled to the United States in 1938, when Austria was annexed by Germany. She was also an inventor. In the run-up to World War II, she wanted to contribute to the United States war effort. Since the Nazis had the capability of jamming torpedo signals, causing them to miss their targets, she set out to develop an unjammable system of radio signals to control them. Along with composer, George Autheil, she developed a system that "would randomly switch to different radio frequencies to get around jamming, known as frequency-hopping (FH) spread spectrum communication." This system, which was patented in 1942 but was classified until 1981. It was used in early WIFI technology and is still in use today for Bluetooth technology. Click on the link above to read the article.
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Lamar, Hedy, actors, Inventors, Theater, Movies and Television, Science, United States