Beauty And Brains

Hedy Lamarr is most known for her beauty on the silver screen as an actress during the golden age of MGM, but few know that her immense beauty was matched by her equally immense brains.In the midst of her acting career in the 1940s, Lamarr teamed up with George Antheil with the idea to create a secret communication system. Lamarr was a talented mathematician and, with the help of Antheil, she was able to create and patent an early version of frequency hopping using piano players. She hoped her invention could be used by the military to make radio-guided torpedoes less detectable and harder to jam. Despite securing a patent and pitching the idea to the US Navy, few men of the day took Lamarr or her ingenious idea seriously because of her reputation as an actress.The idea of frequency hopping that she had developed using a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies was finally picked up by the Navy in 1962. By then, the patent had expired along with Lamarr’s hope for getting any recognition. Today, Lamarr’s invention is widely used as a basis for things such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi—but she received little credit for her idea until 1997. a to the US Navy, few men of the day took Lamarr or her ingenious idea seriously because of her reputation as an actress.The idea of frequency hopping that she had developed using a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies was finally picked up by the Navy in 1962. By then, the patent had expired along with Lamarr’s hope for getting any recognition. Today, Lamarr’s invention is widely used as a basis for things such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi—but she received little credit for her idea until 1997.