Hedy Lamarr: Hollywood Star Who Indirectly Invented Wi-Fi

Speak of Hedy Lamarr and the label soon follows - 'the most beautiful woman in the world'. 

It was used by the studio in the publicity for her films.  It was adopted by the press in their reviews of the same.  It was reinforced by World War Two military men, who voted her the pin-up that they most wanted with them on the front line.

Yet to Hedy Lamarr herself, the fact of her beauty was a curse.  It put her into the movies and made her famous, but it also meant that nobody took her seriously.  Behind the beauty was a razor sharp mind, bored by the banality of Hollywood parties and more at home with intellectual discussions and debates.

She was constantly being underestimated and dismissed.  When she presented the US military with a patent, which would revolutionize their technology, she was laughed out of the office.  The pretty, little thing would be much better occupied flirting with the American public to induce them to buy War Bonds.

The blueprint that she took to them that day is now used globally, not only in military technology but in all manner of computers and cellphones.

It took the world decades to catch up with Lamarr's mind.  She was too beautiful for them to notice it.

Hedy Lamarr was already a movie star in her native Austria, when she met Friedrich Mandl. 

She was just nineteen years old and already grabbing headlines for the film Extase (Ecstasy in English).  There had been scenes where she ran naked through a woodland setting; and then there was that moment. 

Lying on a bed, the camera focusing in extreme close up on her face, her expression had been one of, ahem, rapture.

Friedrich, on the other hand, was thirty-two years old and reputed to be the third richest man in Austria.  They married on August 10th 1933, just eight months after the release of Extase.

There is no doubt that he viewed the actress as his 'trophy wife'.  As soon as they were married, Friedrich used his immense wealth in a bid to buy up every copy of Extase in circulation. He did not want anyone else to see her in the throes of passion. 

What he did want was for Hedy to sit down and shut up, smiling sweetly and waiting upon his guests, at the couple's lavish business dinners.

She was so bored.  She was so unbelievably bored.  But while the teenager was listening to all of these munitions men describing their latest torpedos, her quick mind couldn't fail to take notes.  These were important arms dealers.  Their weapons were the latest, biggest, fastest and most destructive on the market.  Hedy absorbed it all.

But Europe was changing.  In Germany, the Third Reich was rising and Adolf Hitler had just become Chancellor.  The Nazis became Friedrich's key clientele; and he supported their ideology too.  Which was a little worrying for Hedy, as she was Jewish.

She got to hear it all first hand.  Both Hitler and Mussolini attended parties hosted by the Mandls.  She heard her husband, so controlling in his marriage, also agreeing with policies which would destroy her people.

One day, Hedy persuaded her husband to allow her to wear all of her jewelry for a dinner party.  Then she simply left.   He pursued her.  He had the funds to pay for good investigators and information too.

Hedy ended up in Paris, France, where she hired a maid who looked just like her.  Drugging the poor woman, Hedy dressed in the maid's uniform and managed to sneak out unseen that way.  She was soon on an ocean liner heading to the United States of America.  She was free.

All of that fame and fortune soon secured a place for Hedy Lamarr in LA's most exclusive neighborhoods. 

By 1941, she was living at 11805 Bellagio Road, in Bel Air, amongst the biggest A-List stars of her day.  Yet if her fellow industry movers and celebrities loved the high life, it wasn't for Lamarr.  She much preferred to ferret out the intelligentsia and invite them around for dinner.

Amongst them was one of her neighbors, the Hollywood Bad Boy of Music George Antheil.  It's not difficult to see what the attraction was there.  As the son of German immigrants, he spoke her language; as a man who loved tinkering with mechanical things, he spoke her intellectual language too.

There were hints at a romance between the couple (who are pictured above), but both parties denied it.  It wasn't love that each were after (they were both married to other people), it was the spark of ideas.

In particular, it was an idea which Hedy Lamarr had conceived, which she had identified may be developed with one of Antheil's most famous inventions. 

The avant garde movie Ballet Mécanique (1924) had been the showcase for that.  It had called for multiple pianos to be played simultaneously, but not by human hands.  As a musician, Antheil had been responsible for the score.  As a man obsessed with mechanics, he'd also worked out how to install rollers inside the pianos, to press the keys in perfect time.

Hedy needed that technology.  It fitted in perfectly with the blueprints for her own invention, and it would be the thing which made it all actually work.

In 1941, the Second World War was raging in Europe.  The United States of America were not yet involved (Pearl Harbor wasn't until December 7th), but there were plenty who thought that they might be.

Hedy Lamarr, at home in Hollywood, had more reason than most to be concerned about developments in Europe.  Her entire family was there.  She had knowledge of the munitions available to the Nazis.  She wanted America to have better.

This was Lamarr's idea. She thought that it may be possible to guide a torpedo with radio-waves; to direct precisely where it may fall.  However, she was also keenly aware that radio-waves could be intercepted by enemy hackers.  She needed a way to transmit them in such a way that no-one checking in would even be able to locate the directions, let alone read them.

She took this idea, along with her blueprints and formulas, to Antheil.  She had worked out how his piano roller mechanics might be the key to both diverting and interrupting the frequency.  It would transmit the instructions on one wave, then switch instantly to another, then another and another.

In the middle of all of this, there would be random instances of blank data.  That would confuse all hacking equipment.

Antheil was enthralled.  He and Lamarr spent days brain-storming refinements and tinkering with her initial design.  They were finally ready to take their Secret Communication System to the patent office, then to the US military.

What they registered that day is very well known to us today.  It provides the kernel of technology behind Spread Spectrum Communication Technology.  In short, it's what allows you to call on your cell phone, find routes with your GPS and connect to the internet wirelessly.  While not the whole thing, Lamarr's idea grew into Wi-Fi.

There is little doubt that Lamarr and Antheil were ahead of their time with their frequency hopping idea.  It was never used in World War Two.

The fact of the matter is that the US Navy didn't take either of them seriously. 

Hedy Lamarr was too beautiful and too famous; George Antheil was too weird and a musician! Even as Lamarr tried to explain precisely what they were contributing here, the military men were dismissing her as an airhead.  She handed over the patent, as a gift.  They shoved it into a file and left it to gather dust.

Instead Hedy Lamarr was sent out onto the streets, entertaining the troops or appearing at War Bond galas.  With her beauty, sex appeal and stardom, the American public would be beguiled into parting with cash.  That was seen as her true place in the war effort.

She attempted to join the National Inventors Council too.  It also suggested that public appearances were more her calling.

It wasn't until the 1960s, when military thinking had finally caught up with hers, that the patent's blueprint was pulled out and dusted off.  It was used during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  It's been used ever since. 

Yet neither Lamarr nor Antheil ever made a penny off what is arguably one of the most significant inventions of the 20th and 21st centuries.  Their contribution went without credit until the Electronic Frontier Foundation Award in 1997.   Only then did President George W. Bush see fit to add his own accolade in 1999.

It was all too late for Antheil, who died in 1951.  It was nearly too late for Lamarr too.  She heard about it, but was a recluse in her old age.  She didn't venture out to collect her reward, then died at the age of 86 a few months later.