The Beautiful Inventor Of Wireless Technology!

During WWII German submarines were targeting passenger cruise liners.

Allies were finding it difficult to control the German torpedoes.

They partially succeeded in jamming the radio frequency
temporarily, but it did not stop the German submarines to mark their target.

Meanwhile, Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr was glued to the events of WWII.

She got her big break in the movie Algiers (1938), which became a National Sensation.

Also known as ‘the most beautiful woman’, she was often cast as an archetypal, glamorous, and seductress woman.

Her Hollywood career boasts of many blockbuster movies. A few of them are Lady of the Tropics (1939), Comrade X (1940), Come Live with Me (1941), Tortilla Flat (1942).

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But she was not only popular for her looks and glamorous roles.

Unlike other Hollywood stars, she neither drank nor party.

So she had to find something else to pass her time.

Being a science lover, she installed a drafting table in her room to conduct experiments.

Her early inventions were an improved traffic stoplight and a tablet when dissolved in the water created a soda similar to Coca-Cola.

However, she never patented the drink because it tasted awful like Alka-Seltzer.

When she heard about German submarines hitting passenger cruise liners, she felt compelled to help the Allies.

She started to spend her evenings studying the torpedoes and radio frequency techniques.

Finally, she came to the conclusion that radio signals could be jammed, but if the signal jumps around randomly from frequency to frequency, then the person at the other end trying to jam the signal won’t be able to identify it.

If one frequency is jammed then it may hit another frequency.
But it would be only for some seconds.

She realized that the German radio-controlled torpedoes can be jammed by hopping the frequency which will make them go off their course.

Collaborating with composer George Antheil, she designed a frequency hopping system that will continually change the radio signals sent to the torpedoes.

They patented this invention on 11th August 1942 and submitted their proposal to the Navy.

But the Navy, declined the proposal because it was coming from an outside source.

This frequency hopping system became the foundation of wireless communications.

GPS, CDMA, WIFI, and Bluetooth rely on the fundamentals of this radio frequency hopping technology.

In 1962, the US Navy used this design in developing a sonar system to detect submarines in water and transmit this information to an airplane above.

Thank you, Hedy Lamarr. You are a perfect example of beauty and brains.