Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress and inventor who helped to develop the technology that is now used in WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communication systems.
She fled her affluent Austrian ammunition manufacturer husband and discreetly traveled to Paris after a brief early cinema career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial Ecstasy (1933). She met Louis B. Mayer, the studio chief of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in London, and he gave her a movie deal in Hollywood.
With her performance in Algiers, she became a movie star in 1938. Lady of the Tropics (1939), Boom Town (1940), H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), and White Cargo (1941) are among her MGM films (1942). Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949) was her most famous role.
Before the premiere of her final picture, The Female Animal, she also appeared on television (1958). In 1960, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
She and composer George Antheil created a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to overcome the threat of jamming by the Axis forces at the start of World War II.
The principles of their work are incorporated into Bluetooth and GPS technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi. Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s. In 2014, they were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for their efforts.
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