The 'mother of WiFi' gets her due in a new PBS documentary

[elmac]

Twenty minutes into Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, I realized I know the actress for an embarrassing reason. We're introduced to one of the defining moments of Lamarr's career. She appears nude, hiding in some bushes in a 1933 black-and-white Czech-Austrian movie called Ekstase (or Ecstasy), which I first saw in a German art museum earlier this year. Back then, as executive producer Susan Sarandon put it, "She was the first woman to reenact an orgasm on screen!" I wish I knew Lamarr for a nobler reason, but I was just one of many who associated the actress with her less-savory exploits.

Regardless of whether you remember Lamarr, or what you know her for, her achievements are many -- that much Bombshell makes clear. She was a hardworking actress, a determined producer, a patriotic supporter of American troops, a wife (many times over), an unpredictable mother and an icon of Hollywood glamour. But one title for which Lamarr never received real recognition during her life was that of inventor.

Inspired by her father, who would explain how things worked, a young Lamarr took apart and reassembled any gadget she could get her hands on. She then moved from tearing apart music boxes to coming up with water-soluble tablets that created instant sodas. According to the film, Lamarr even helped Howard Hughes design a more aerodynamic structure for airplane wings by combining the shapes of fish fins and bird wings.

But those creations are paltry compared to Lamarr's wartime invention that earned her the title of "mother of WiFi". She came up with a method of sending radio signals by making them jump between channels called frequency-hopping out of a desire to help the Navy deploy radio-guided torpedoes without enemy interference during World War II. Lamarr teamed up with composer George Antheil to design a method using piano-rolls to send and receive the scrambled signals, and the pair received a patent for their work.



https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/01/the-forgotten-mother-of-wifi/

[jberryhill]

1. .

[Blue_Tires]

5. Beat me to it...

[That Guy 888]

7. Blazing Saddles was great, but she didn't like the joke.

The 1970s was a decade of increasing seclusion for Lamarr. She was offered several scripts, television commercials, and stage projects, but none piqued her interest. In 1974, she filed a $10 million lawsuit against Warner Bros., claiming that the running parody of her name ("Hedley Lamarr&quot in the Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles infringed her right to privacy. Brooks said he was flattered; the studio settled out of court for an undisclosed nominal sum and an apology to Lamarr for “almost using her name". Brooks said that Lamarr "never got the joke"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr#Later_years

[jberryhill]

8. That's the price of celebrity

The best line was, "Calm down, it's 1870. You can sue HER."

[niyad]

2. off to greatest with you. and about damned time that her accomplishments are widely

recognized.

[elmac]

4. Spread spectrum technology

used with wireless phones, cell phones and wifi owes a lot to this beautiful & talented inventor. Without it there can be no truly secure communications.

[dalton99a]

3. Kick.

[burfman]

6. A patent that would be worth billions today.....

A one page easy to read summary of her invention on page 78 of an article titled "cryptology and the origins of spread spectrum" in IEEE Spectrum Magazine September 1984

http://spectrum.ieee.org/ns/pdfs/09_84_cryptography.pdf