Hedy Lamarr

Life & Legacy

Hedy Lamarr (; born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler; November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000) was an Austrian and American actress and inventor. Regarded as a successful film star, she also co-invented a radio guidance system during World War II.
After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial erotic romantic drama Ecstasy (1933), she fled from her first husband, Friedrich Mandl, and secretly moved to Paris. Traveling to London, she met Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a film contract in Hollywood. Lamarr became a film star with her performance in the romantic drama Algiers (1938). She achieved further success with the Western Boom Town (1940) and the drama White Cargo (1942). Lamarr's most successful film was the religious epic Samson and Delilah (1949). She also acted on television before the release of her final film in 1958. She was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
At the beginning of World War II, along with composer George Antheil, Lamarr co-invented a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of radio jamming by the Axis powers. This approach, conceptualized as a "Secret Communication System", was intended to provide secure, jam-resistant communication for weapon guidance by spreading the signal across multiple frequencies. Similar technology was used in operational systems only beginning in 1962, which was well after World War II and three years after the expiry of the Lamarr–Antheil patent. Frequency hopping, which existed and was utilized before the Lamarr–Antheil patent, is a foundational technology for spread spectrum communications. Its principles are utilized for secure wireless networking, including Bluetooth and early versions of Wi-Fi, which use variants of spread spectrum to protect data from interception and interference.