Hedy Lamarr, pioneer of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

What do Hollywood, World War II, and WiFi have in common?

The answer is an Austrian film actress and inventor named Hedy Lamarr, born in 1914.

In 1941, half the world was at war and the other half was about to enter it. Hedy knew firsthand about Hitler's government practices and harbored a deep grudge against the Nazis, so she decided to make her personal contribution to the Allies' war effort.

First, she offered her work and training as an engineer to the recently created National Inventors Council, but her offer was politely rejected by the authorities, who advised her to base her participation on her looks and her success as an actress by promoting the sale of war bonds. Far from discouraged, she consulted her agent and they came up with a campaign in which anyone who bought $25,000 or more in bonds would receive a kiss from the actress. In one night she sold $7 million.

And she kept going... Frequency-hopping spread spectrum was born after Lamarr realized that the signals that guided U.S. Navy torpedoes by radio were very easy to jam, causing them to veer off course. Talking with composer George Antheil, they realized that frequencies could be changed the same way notes are changed in a player piano (it used a pair of perforated, synchronized drums to switch between 88 frequencies). And that's what they did. The military did not realize the usefulness of this invention until the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Lamarr's technology was used to control torpedoes and communications and, today, it is still used for mobile networks, Bluetooth devices, and WiFi.

Unfortunately, in her time she did not receive the recognition she deserved for her contribution to technology. Not until she was 82. Both she and George Antheil (who had died in 1959) received the Pioneer Award in 1997, granted by the American organization Electronic Frontier Foundation, for their discoveries and contributions to the field of spread-spectrum technology.

In Austria, Inventors' Day is celebrated on November 9 in her honor.

At Suris Code, we promote innovation and recognition of the contributions of historical figures who have generated immeasurable technological advances that changed the lives of people and organizations.