A renowned actress known for her beauty, created the fundamentals of today’s wireless technology, including the GPS, Bluetooth, CDMA, and Wi-Fi. In other words, Hedy Lamarr demonstrated what it means to be a ‘Beauty with Brains’.
In Vienna, Austria on November 9th, 1914, Hedy Lamarr, formerly known as Hedwig Eva Keisler, was born in a wealthy, Jewish family of a bank director father, Emil Keisler, and a concert pianist mother, Gertrud Keisler.
Growing up, Emil would encourage Hedy’s ever-growing curiosity of the world by explaining the ins-and-outs of machines and how they functioned, such as street cars and the printing press. On the other hand, Gertrud would involve her in ballet and piano lessons in which Hedy grew a fascination and experienced the best of both worlds:
the science and the arts.
Hedy’s brilliant mind was evident yet disregarded, where she instead pursued the movie industry and became known as “the most beautiful woman in Europe” that would turn heads. Eventually, when Hedy traveled to London, she met Howard Hughes, a businessman and pilot, who she shared ideas of innovations with; he encouraged her to make these ideas come to fruition and pushed her to invent.
When brought to Hughes’ airplane factories, she’d create designs for faster planes by combining the fins of the fastest fish and the wings of the fastest bird together, proclaimed a “genius” for the design.
Hedy would go on to make other creations, such as a light-up dog collar, a tissue box attachment, and a unique shower seat for elderly to safely get out of a bathtub. However, her most notable inventions would take place during World War II.
Hedy had prior knowledge about war weaponry which became advantageous during WWII. In 1940, she met and collaborated with George Antehill to support the war efforts in favor of the United States. They’d create what was known as a frequency-hopping technology, a new type of communication involving “frequency hopping” between transmitters and receivers using radio waves.
This creation was intended to aid the U.S. army by guiding torpedoes towards targets and subsequently preventing interception of radio waves but was, unfortunately, rejected. However, their creation would regain popularity and recognition from car phones in the 1970s, in which it would allow callers to share radio frequencies. Since then, this technology has evolved to what we use in modern day society.
Hence, Hedy Lamarr is widely known as the “Mother of Wi-Fi” and has proven that she’s both a Hollywood and Science icon.
Works Cited
Biswas, Sumedha. “Hedy Lamarr.” The Quantum Universe, 31 Jan. 2020, www.quantumuniverse.nl/hedy-lamarr.
Cheslak, Colleen. “Biography: Hedy Lamarr.” National Women’s History Museum, 2018,
www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/hedy-lamarr.
Hassan, Nazifa. “That WIFI Signal? You Can Thank Hedy Lamarr for That.” The Holly Spirit, 3 May 2023,
thehollyspirit.org/6902/arts-and-culture/that-wifi-signal-you-can-thank-hedy-lamarr-for-that/.
Roos, Dave. “How Hollywood Star Hedy Lamarr Invented the Tech behind WIFI.” History.Com, A&E Television
Networks, 5 Mar. 2024, www.history.com/news/hedy-lamarr-inventor-frequency-hopping-wifi.
About the Author
My name is Tran Le, and I am a rising senior from Florida! I’m pursuing Computer Science as my future major in college to be able to innovate projects and progress technology!
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