What she actually did
In 1940 Lamarr and the avant-garde composer George Antheil designed a radio guidance system for torpedoes that could not be jammed. The transmitter and receiver would hop together through a sequence of frequencies, synchronised by a mechanism derived from player-piano rolls — Antheil had already written music for sixteen synchronised player pianos, so the engineering problem of keeping two machines in step was one he had solved for art. The patent, granted in 1942, describes eighty-eight frequencies, the number of keys on a piano. Spread spectrum and frequency hopping are now foundational to secure wireless communication.
Why you have never heard of her
The US Navy rejected it, on the stated grounds that the mechanism was too bulky to fit inside a torpedo. Lamarr was told that the useful thing a film star could do for the war effort was sell bonds, and she did — reportedly raising $25 million in a single evening. The patent expired in 1959; comparable systems went into operational use from 1962. Neither inventor earned a cent from it. Her recognition as an inventor did not begin until 1997, three years before her death, and most obituaries still led with her face.
Her life
She was born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna, the daughter of a bank director who took her on walks explaining how machinery worked. At nineteen she married Friedrich Mandl, an Austrian arms manufacturer who sold munitions to Mussolini and entertained Nazi officials at home. Lamarr sat through the dinners and listened to men discuss weapons systems, torpedoes and radio control. She later said it was an education.
She escaped the marriage — in her own telling, by drugging a maid and slipping out in her uniform — reached London, met Louis B. Mayer and arrived in Hollywood with a seven-year contract and a new name. MGM marketed her as "the most beautiful woman in the world", which was both lucrative and a cage.
She had no formal technical training and invented constantly: an improved traffic light, a tablet that fizzed into a flavoured drink, a redesign of aircraft wing shapes she discussed with Howard Hughes, who lent her a team of chemists. The torpedo guidance system came out of reading about German U-boats sinking ships carrying evacuated children.
The last decades were hard — plastic surgery, reclusion, arrests for shoplifting, a long legal battle with a software company that used her image without permission. She took a call in 1997 telling her she had won the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award. Her reported response was: "It's about time."
“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”— Hedy Lamarr
Things worth knowing
- Eighty-eight frequencies, eighty-eight piano keysThe patent's hopping sequence was synchronised by a slotted paper roll, borrowed directly from Antheil's player-piano compositions.
- Filed under her married nameUS Patent 2,292,387 was granted on 11 August 1942 to "Hedy Kiesler Markey" — her legal name at the time. Even the patent does not say Hedy Lamarr.
- She learned weapons at the dinner tableHer first husband's business meetings with arms manufacturers and fascist officials gave her a working knowledge of torpedoes and radio control.
- $25 million in one nightTold to sell war bonds instead of inventing, she was reportedly extraordinarily good at it.
- Recognised at 82The EFF Pioneer Award came in 1997. Induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame came in 2014, fourteen years after she died.
Timeline
Marries arms manufacturer Friedrich Mandl and spends four years listening to weapons engineers at dinner.
Escapes to London, then Hollywood, under contract to MGM.
Meets George Antheil; together they design a frequency-hopping torpedo guidance system.
US Patent 2,292,387 granted for a "Secret Communication System".
The Navy declines the invention; Lamarr is directed to sell war bonds.
The patent expires, unused and unpaid.
Frequency-hopping systems enter US military service during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Receives the EFF Pioneer Award and the BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award.
What it means now
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS and military anti-jamming systems all descend from the family of techniques Lamarr and Antheil patented in 1942. Her birthday, 9 November, is Inventors' Day in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. She remains the clearest case in this collection of a woman made so visible that nobody looked at her.
