Today is International Day of Women and Girls in Science, and thinking about this, a woman I discovered recently came to my mind: Hedy Lamarr. The teacher of a WordPress course mentioned her… Yes, he put her as one of his references, he briefly described her, in two sentences, but I was fascinated, and that’s when I started looking for more information about her. His life itself seems like an unlikely Hollywood movie.
Since we cannot travel, let’s travel in history, don’t you think? So, let’s go there!
We can say that Hedy Lamarr laid the foundations for Wifi technology. No, she did not do it so that now we can all go on the internet anywhere, but to combat Nazism. How? Let me tell you.
Eclipsed by its beauty, Lamarr laid the foundations of security for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS devices (indispensable for autonomous cars), mobile phones and military technology thanks to a revolutionary invention: frequency hopping. An invention that was stolen by the United States.
Hedy Lamarr, Hollywood actress, yes, yes, the same, I have not mistaken with the wrong person. Hedy Lamarr was born in Austria in 1914. Of Jewish origin, she was the first woman to appear nude in the cinema while faking an orgasm, in the film Ecstasy. Now you may be wondering: “But weren’t you going to tell me about the inventor of Wifi?” Yes, yes, it is the same.
After the scandal of said film, his parents wanted to straighten out her path, so they thought it would be a good idea to accept the marriage proposal made by an arms industry magnate, despite Lamarr’s opposition. He was jealous and controlling, to the point that he would not let her undress except in his presence; he even wanted to collect all the copies of the film.
Her husband, Fritz Mandl, forced her to attend all business lunches and dinners. In them she collected information on the characteristics of the latest Nazi weapons technology, since her husband provided the arsenal of Hitler and Mussolini. In fact, he was considered an honorary Aryan by fascist governments despite his Jewish origin.
That marriage (of six that she had) was described by Lamarr as “pure slavery.”
She managed to escape through the window of a restaurant bathroom leaving with no more than the clothes on their backs. She managed to get to London, after being pursued for days by her husband’s bodyguards. In London she took an ocean liner that took her to the United States and before getting off the ship she had already signed a contract with Metro Golden Mayer, with a new stage name: Hedy Lamarr (her real name was Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler). And so he restarted his artistic career.
In 1941, with half the world in war, she wanted to do her bit. Together with the composer George Antheil, she developed a system to improve the radio communication of the British submarines, which had just been destroyed before the superiority of the Germans.
How could she make radio communications secure so that the submarines were not intercepted by German torpedoes? It was then that she found the prelude to the frequency jump, a secret communication system to avoid interference and make possible the guided missiles. The patent was classified as top secret and was not used immediately.
The American government, which had received confidential information that Lamarr had about the Nazi regime, advised him to put down the inventions and go to raise money through war bonds and to encourage the troops. The same year that it was patented, the United States appropriated the system, claiming that it was a foreign invention.
In 1962 his patent was used for the first time in the Cuban missile crisis, and later in Vietnam. It also played a predominant role in the American defense satellite system (Milstar), until in the 1980s, the spread spectrum system saw its first contributions in civil engineering.
From here, with the emergence of digital technology, the frequency jump made it possible to implement data communication via Wifi. It also makes it possible to have a conversation on a mobile phone in a room where there is another mobile phone, connect two devices via Bluetooth or for a mobile phone to receive GPS coordinates from a satellite.
Hedy Lamarr was the victim of a system that exalted her because of her physique but rejected her as a creator.
In 1997 she was awarded the Pioneer Award, at that time she was already isolated and bitter about the unfortunate life she had lived, seeing how her invention was applied in the technologies of the time without the slightest recognition. After this award, awards began to rain on her, late for her. She passed away in 2000.
November 9 in Austria is Inventor’s Day in his honor.
I have written some of the most outstanding milestones of her life in a very summarized and fast way, if you want to know more about this insatiable woman you can read more here or I would recommend reading her memoirs.