Hedy lamarr invention

Frequency Hopping, she was also a shrewd inventor who devised a signal Lamarr—born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Austria in 1914—developed a passion for helping the U.S. military after walking away from an unhappy marriage to an Austrian Fascist weapons manufacturer in 1937. In an attempt to stall her acting career, he had brought her to his business meetings, where she found herself continuously listening to "fat bastards argue antiaircraft this, vacuum tube that," explains Lamarr's character—played by Erica Newhouse—in the play, Frequency Hopping. In the meetings, they had talked about developing detection devices to listen to, and jam, the radio signals that American aircraft and weapons used to communicate with one another; and Lamarr wanted to foil their plans. "Can you guide your torpedo towards an enemy target—or just use radio control period—without being detected? Or jammed?" Lamarr's character asks. Lamarr realized that by transmitting radio signals along rapidly changing, or " In 1940 after working on the project for several years, Lamarr called on an unlikely invention partner: avant-garde composer More broadly, frequency hopping can be compared with aspects of human communication, argues the production's Brooklyn-based playwright and director Elyse Singer, whose other works include Love In The Void (alt.fan.c-love), a play about Courtney Love's Internet postings. Just as the frequencies "hop" to avoid detection, "we send secret codes to each other, shift and hop...

Table of Contents • • • • • Hedy Lamarr was the type of woman judgmental people love to underestimate. With her hazy green eyes, jet black hair, full lips, and coy smile, she was once known as the most beautiful woman in the world. Her looks were so captivating that she captured the attention of Hollywood producers in the 1930s and 1940s. However, as Lamarr once said, “The brains of people are more interesting than the looks . . .” This especially rang true with her. Although she became typecast as the exotic, seductive femme fatale, she was one of the most prolific inventors of the 20th century, embodying the phrase “women in tech” before the concept even existed. People tend to recognize true genius after a person is long gone—just ask Galileo, Thoreau, Van Gogh, and Tesla. Despite the fame that she experienced as a glamorous actress, Lamarr was no exception to the rule. She died as a hermit with little money to her name, although she invented the technology that powers so much of our world today. If you’re reading this article on a smartphone or computer hooked up to WiFi, take a moment to learn more about the woman that made this feat possible. What Did Hedy Lamarr Invent? Hedy Lamarr was a Hollywood actress and inventor from Vienna, Austria, who developed frequency hopping—the technology behind WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS. Until recently, her legacy was nothing short of shallow. She was just one of the many beautiful actresses who graced the screen during the Golden Age ...

Hedy Lamarr, long known only for her beauty and numerous Hollywood roles, was a brilliant inventor. She would shoot a scene and return to her trailer to tinker with new ideas and inventions. One of her most brilliant inventions was that of a secret communication system that could guide military weaponry using “frequency-hopping” technology. This same technology is used today as the basis for WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth. Students will learn about Lamarr’s double life as an actress and an inventor, what her inventions consisted of, the basic ideas behind her most significant invention, and how female inventors—both past and present—faced a multitude of challenges. • Students will gain knowledge on the history of a famous female inventor, learn the difficulties surrounding female inventor s and scientist s in a world that didn’t want to accept them. • Students will learn about women’s roles and limitations in World War II. • Students will learn the process of attaining and maintaining a patent; they will subsequently learn about the lack of representation of women inventors and women in STEM. Optional science component: • Students will learn that inventors must endure periods of trial and error before succeeding. • Students will grasp an understanding of how radio waves are created, transmitted, and sometimes blocked. • Students should understand why World War II was fought and who was involved. • Students should understand that women played a role in World War II. • Students sh...

She was a Hollywood star who spent her nights developing a frequency-hopping communication system. She was the inventor of a precursor of Wi-Fi who by day played Dalilaunder the direction of Cecil B. DeMille. She was the wife of a Jew who sold weapons to Hitler and Mussolini. She was an immigrant who told authorities in the US everything she knew about the weapons of the Axis powers. All this was the remarkable Hedy Lamarr (9 September 1914 – 19 January 2000), a character worthy of a novel by John Le Carré, and whose birth 100 years ago we now celebrate. In 1933, the year the film Ecstasy came out in which she appeared nude and launched her career on the back of the ensuing scandal, the Austrian actress Hedy Kiesler married her first husband, magnate Fritz Mandl, “who was supplying illegal weapons to the fascist governments of Europe,” explains Stephen Michael Shearer, biographer of the actress and author of Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr. Their relationship was not ideal. “She was a trophy wife who was denied a social life without her husband; her career stalled,” says the biographer. Hedy escaped from her husband and moved to the US, resuming her career in Hollywood in 1937. With her new name, Hedy Lamarr, the stunningly beautiful actress became a big star. But behind her glittering public image, Lamarr was hiding something. In Vienna she had heard discussions about weapons and communications systems that her husband had had with the leaders of fascist Europe. And wh...

There’s a ghost in the car. A flash of red lipstick in the rearview, the small wind of batted eyelashes. Austrian Alps seem to loom out the window, just past the plains, and the frozen telephone poles look for a moment like Hollywood palm trees. The highway is empty, and the steering wheel moves itself. A green warning blinks on the dash screen as invisible fingers jab me from the seat cushion, then another flash of red. The Cadillac CT6’s Super Cruise system wants me to quit daydreaming and look at the road. This story originally appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of Road & Track. SYD CUMMINGS I’m in Nebraska on a cold January day, traveling with photographer Syd Cummings in a black Cadillac to test the car’s semi-autonomous driving. To see if a new piece of machinery can pilot itself back to its origins. Back to when a forgotten discovery and a glamorous Hollywood starlet put into motion the technology that might eventually replace us behind the wheel. The CT6 looks black-tie and moneyed with its chrome grille and delicate Art Deco wheels. The weather we’re driving through is decidedly unglamorous, light snow and a wind so cold you can feel it through the windows. Thankfully, the CT6 has a heated steering wheel that I keep resting my hands on, even though Super Cruise doesn’t require the action to keep the car moving. Related Story • The CT6-V Is a Car Cadillac Should Be Proud Of The Robot, Take the Wheel: The Road to Autonomous Cars and the Lost Art of Driving. In t...

Hedy Lamarr Invention of Spread Spectrum Technology Although better known for her Silver Screen exploits, Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) also became a pioneer in the field of wireless communications following her emigration to the United States. The international beauty icon, along with co-inventor George Anthiel, developed a "Secret Communications System" to help combat the Nazis in World War II. By manipulating radio frequencies at irregular intervals between transmission and reception, the invention formed an unbreakable code to prevent classified messages from being intercepted by enemy personnel. Lamarr and Anthiel received a patent in 1941, but the enormous significance of their invention was not realized until decades later. It was first implemented on naval ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequently emerged in numerous military applications. But most importantly, the "spread spectrum" technology that Lamarr helped to invent would galvanize the digital communications boom, forming the technical backbone that makes cellular phones, fax machines and other wireless operations possible. As is the case with many of the famous women inventors, Lamarr received very little recognition of her innovative talent at the time, but recently she has been showered with praise for her groundbreaking invention. In 1997, she and George Anthiel were honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award. And later in the same year,...

By the time American audiences were introduced to Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr in the 1938 film Algiers, she had already lived an eventful life. She got her scandalous start in film in Czechoslovakia (her first role was in the erotic Ecstasy). She was married at 19 in pre-World War II Europe to Fritz Mandl, a paranoid, overly protective arms dealer linked with fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany. After her father’s sudden death and as the war approached, she fled Mandl’s country estate in the middle of the night and escaped to London. Unable to return home to Vienna where her mother lived, and determined to get into the movies, she booked passage to the States on the same ship as mogul Louis B. Mayer. Flaunting herself, she drew his attention and signed with his MGM Studios before they docked. Arriving in Hollywood brought her a new name (Lamarr was originally Kiesler), fame, multiple marriages and divorces and a foray into groundbreaking work as a producer, before she eventually became a recluse. But perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Lamarr’s life isn’t as well known: during WWII, when she was 27 , the movie star invented and patented an ingenious forerunner of current high-tech communications. Her life is explored in a new documentary, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. Director Alexandra Dean spoke with Smithsonian.com about Lamarr’s unheralded work as an inventor. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Most people know Hedy Lamarr as this ...

by Elisa Lichtenbaum Hollywood star But the Austrian-born starlet was also an inventor whose pioneering work — a frequency-hopping communications system created to help defeat the Nazis during World War II — is the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth technologies. Lamarr’s beauty stood in the way of her getting the credit she deserved for this groundbreaking invention. Here are 7 fascinating facts about this iconic movie star-turned-inventor. 1) Her first film was banned by the Pope and Hitler. Lamarr soared to international stardom at age 18 when she appeared in the 1933 Czech film Ecstasy . While some critics today have declared Ecstasy an arthouse classic, its nudity and sexual nature were considered scandalous when it was originally released. The Pope denounced the film in the Vatican newspaper, the Catholic Legion of Decency condemned it, and Hitler banned it in Germany – because Lamarr (then Hedy Kiesler) was Jewish. 2) She was the model for Snow White and Catwoman. Ink-black tresses. Cherry-red lips. Porcelain doll complexion. Lamarr’s beauty was simultaneously classic and exotic, making her the perfect model for Disney’s Snow White. Lamarr was also the inspiration for Catwoman in the original Batman comics. More recently, actress Anne Hathaway told The Washington Post that she studied Lamarr’s voice while preparing for the role of Catwoman in the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises . 3) She’s a rock star at Google. Google paid tribute to Lamarr in a smart and sty...