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    The Sideshow

    Famed actress Hedy Lamarr helped invent wireless technology

    Richard Rhodes' new biography details how actress Hedy Lamarr helped invest wireless technology

    A new biography from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explains how former actress Hedy Lamarr, once considered "the most beautiful woman in the world," was actually a prolific inventor, providing the U.S. Navy with the blueprints for the wireless technology behind cell phone networks and GPS.

    Rhodes told NPR that Lamarr was bored by the Hollywood social scene and  had set up a drafting table in her house and launched a sideline as an inventor. When German submarines began attacking civilian passenger cruise liners, Lamarr and her co-inventor George Antheil, came up with the idea of "spread-spectrum radio" to remotely control torpedoes:

    "She understood that the problem with radio signals was that they could be jammed. But if you could make the signal hop around more or less randomly from radio frequency to radio frequency, then the person at the other end trying to jam the signal won't know where it is," he says. "If they try to jam one particular frequency, it might hit that frequency on one of its hops, but it would only be there for a fraction of a second."

    Lamarr and Antheil received a patent for their idea in 1942 but the Navy was lukewarm to the idea, leaving it untouched for years. Rhodes says after the war, the Navy returned to the idea and "the whole system spread like wildfire." And to this day, features of Lamarr's original invention are still found in most wireless devices.

    In the early 1990s, Lamarr finally received acknowledgement for her contribution from the communications industry, reportedly saying, "Well, it's about time." When she wasn't planning the future of how nearly everyone on the planet now communications over the phone, Lamarr was coming up with other less-successful inventions, including a tablet that dissolved in water to create a soda similar to Coca-Cola.

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    • Chris Ross  •  Ocala, Florida  •  2 mths ago
      Unbelieveable brains with beauty! Too bad accolades from Navy came after death.
    • Criss  •  Los Angeles, United States  •  5 mths ago
      Gorgeous and intelligent, now we need to see a good movie about it
    • Mark B  •  Newark, United States  •  5 mths ago
      There's one woman who didn't need The National Enquirer or any of those "people's magazines" you see at the grocery check-outs to stay in the limelight!...to learn, in fact, that being bored with the pin-up/super-star/incredibly beautiful "Hollywood Scene", Hedy was
      an incredibly gifted inventor who - as was finally recognized(!) - contributed to the U.S. WWII
      effort and to the development of cell phone technology, IS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE!

      Here's one supreme beauty with a beautiful set of brains to match! Try finding that in today's
      "gorgeous starlets", the ones who can't get enough out of being front page items in "news"
      papers for mental paupers!

      Hedy Lamarr - what a woman! What a beautiful woman with a beautiful mind!
      • CATHOLIC CRUSADER 5 mths ago
        And I agree with you totally. She had it all!
      • Your day is coming 5 mths ago
        That is impressive. She liked hanging around the co-inventor because it was mentally stimulating, especially when people can focus on something other then themselves. Living in CA I guess you have to take it to the extreme and go intellectual, lol. Maybe I will go back to college again myself. After giving attention to that I will walk away with something, unlike with people.
      • Springer 5 mths ago
        That's Hedley.
    • Timothy  •  5 mths ago
      For many years I took my walks in Casselberry, Fl. On occasion I would see this elderly woman taking her walks. We would smile and wave but never took the time to talk. When she pasted there was a photo in our local paper. You can imagine my surprise to se that it was Hedy!
    • dawns  •  5 mths ago
      I'm surprized more people didn't know this. She was an amazing actress and inventor. She helped us win WW2. For those who do not know her, she played Delilah in 'Samson and Delilah' amongst other bodies of work. She was an Austrian Jew.
      • Uno 5 mths ago
        Hmm..You never see comments stating: She was an American Catholic. She was a Swedish Buddhist. Make sure everyone knows she was Jewish!
      • Success Nothing Less 5 mths ago
        Uno........In America, the best, the pettiest, and the sexist always is always Caucasian, no matter how many other ethnicities live here. I found it interesting. I'm black!
      • Rich 5 mths ago
        Hey success - with the county about 15% black, how many black actors, newscasters, and TV personalities do you see ? I'm guessing about 50%. Wonder if you find that as "interesting" ?
    • paco  •  Sunnyvale, United States  •  5 mths ago
      Brains and beauty in one package.
      • Dataman 5 mths ago
        Most women are, if you give them a chance. and then some of them are spectacular.
    • Walker Karraa  •  Irvine, United States  •  5 mths ago
      A far cry from Kim Kardashian.
      • S. 5 mths ago
        oh, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaase.
      • Mike 5 mths ago
        Absolutely NO Comparison to the KarTrashAliens.... Vote them OFF the Cable TV
      • Hardtalk 5 mths ago
        I'm so tired with the Kardashians that if they call me for a date, I'll probably say NO!
    • The Real MikeS  •  5 mths ago
      Way cool. I for one had no Idea. It just goes to show you that you cant judge a book by it's cover.
    • phillythekid  •  Roswell, United States  •  5 mths ago
      ...in the early 50.s there was a drink called Fizzy Pop..like an Alka Seltzer soda flavored tablet that you dropped in water...like the Coke flavored pill idea she had..
      • Colonel Angus 5 mths ago
        I remember it in the 60's, it was called "Fizzies".
      • phillythekid 5 mths ago
        colonel you are correct...Fizzies made a fizzy pop..sorry...it.s been 55 years..
      • Jason 5 mths ago
        They still sell them on the internet. Lordy, they taste awful. How I drank those as a kid I will never know.
    • Inquirer  •  Encino, United States  •  5 mths ago
      A few present day actresses may be comparable to Hedy's beauty, but intellectually cannot compare with Hedy Lamarr. Hedy was well ahead in technical know-how.
    • A Yahoo! User  •  Chesapeake Beach, United States  •  5 mths ago
      she sure was no bimbo, like the fake ones we see today.
    • PeachyKeen  •  5 mths ago
      More girls in school need to hear this story.
    • Nick  •  New York, United States  •  5 mths ago
      Why does Yahoo allow their contributors to print brief pieces about people without providing major details? Hedy Lamarr had a degree in mathematics before becoming a film star in her native Germany. Her first husband was an industrialist who forced her stop acting after a nude scene of her running through a forest created a scandal in the early 1930's. After her husband started hosting high level Nazi's she was allowed to sit in on meetings with them. As a Jewish woman she understood what the Nazi's plans were for the Final Solution and decided to escape. Hedy hired a maid who resembled her and drugged her employee and placed her in their bed. She donned the maids clothes to flee to England and then to the USA. She denounced the Nazis and then decided to work on an electromechanical device using piano wires to allow radio signals to hop to random frequencies to prevent jamming. By the early to mid 1940's Hedy was approaching 40 which meant fewer movie offers were coming to her which is a despicable part of the motion picture industry. It really wasn't boredom that made her become an inventor rather it was due to being a very intelligent woman who wanted to stop the insanity of the Nazi war machine who murdered millions.
    • Aaliyah A  •  5 mths ago
      Isn't it a pity that young girls know more about the Kardashians that Hedley Lamarr?
    • adarc  •  Burlington, United States  •  5 mths ago
      Wow - gorgeous, talented and a genius too. They don't make starlettes like that any more.
    • Don  •  Champaign, United States  •  5 mths ago
      She did indeed come up with the idea and premise of "frequency hopping" radios. This transmission and receiving technology has been implemented into military and high-end commercial transceivers for years, and it all came from the ingenious mind of one Hedy Lamarr. Amazing, but true... this technology is no longer used in cell phone systems, but it certainly is in HF radio for military and commercial point-to-point transmissions.
    • Gary Gilmore Jr  •  5 mths ago
      That's exactly why I purchased an old pin-up poster of Hedy from an antiques shop years ago - for her brains.....
    • Tim  •  Warren, United States  •  5 mths ago
      A beautiful woman with a great intellect and a miniature ego... what a rarity... especially today.
    • Jack  •  Hood River, United States  •  5 mths ago
      Sex symbol AND brains too what a package!
    • Nikos P  •  5 mths ago
      Her brains only make her more beautiful than she already is.
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