Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr was the movie star of the 1930s-1950s who was once desciribed as "the most beautiful woman in the world." What was less known about her was that she was the inventor of the frequency hopping transmitter/receiver that was invented during World War II.
While married to Fritz Mandl, an armament manufacturer, Lamarr came to understand a great deal about the weapons her husband was manufaturing for Nazi Germany. In 1937, Lamarr, who detested the Nazis, fled to the U.S. While in Hollywood she met the composer George Antheil. Using the mechanism of piano rolls Lamarr and Antheil developed the system where changing frequencies broadcast by a transmitter could be recognized by the receiver. The enemy in question could therefore neither jam, nor send a false signal to deflect a launched torpedo. The U.S. Navy examined the patent but declared the use of piano rolls too cumbersome. Lamarr's patent expired in 1959, but the principle behind Lamarr and Antheil's invention would come to be known as spread specturm technology
Iris Messenger of the Gods
References:
Women Invent: Two Centuries of Discoveries That Have Shaped the World by Susan Casey (Chicago Review Press, 1997) pp. 13-14.Mothers and Daughters of Invention by Autumn Stanley (Rutgers University Press, 1995) p. 597.
Patently Female by Ethlie Ann Vare and Greg Ptacek (John Wiley and Sons, 2002), pp. 192-194.
Web Sites:
Movie Star InventorNot Just Another Pretty Face
Hedy Lamarr's Invention
