Ah, Hedy Lamarr, a name redolent of wartime Hollywood; a star who appeared alongside most of the leading men of the age. She was a bit before my time so I wasn’t aware that Hedy, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, had something of a fine head on her shoulders.
The Austrian-born actress, who first appeared in the German film Geld auf der Strasse in 1931, is directly responsible for technology that we use today in our smartphones. She was a bit of scientist on the quiet and is apparently something of a hero at Google where she is the subject of today’s Google Doodle.
There aren’t many scions of Hollywood who can be described as “actress and inventor” and, possibly, Hedy is the only one. Bored with her acting career after her first marriage, she turned to applied science and went on to develop a means of countering radio jamming by German forces, thus doing her bit to save the world. It’s fortunate that she had by then forsaken the German film industry and was able to channel her undoubted talents to the Allied cause.
The principles of her work are now incorporated into modern Wi-Fi, CDMA and Bluetooth technology, and this work led to her being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.
Learn something new every day is my motto.