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Hedy Lamarr

Life of Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress during MGM's Golden Age who was under-appreciated for pioneering the basic technology supporting today's Wifi, GPS and Bluetooth technological infrastructure systems[2]. Although she was renowned for starring in films such as Samson and Delilah and Lady of the Tropics, very few people speculate that she was also innovative and talented[1].

Originally named Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler on November 9, 1914 to Jewish parents Emil and Gertrud Kiesler in Vienna of Austria, Hedy always received inspirational remarks from her father to pursue the world with open eyes and would often find herself discussing about the inner-workings of different mechanics with him[2]. Her mother introduced her to ballet and piano lessons of the arts. At only 5 years of age, she was already capable of disassembling and reassembling her music box to gain an understanding of how it worked[2]. By the age of 10, she was able to speak four languages and proficiently play piano and dance[3]. It was not until she was 16 years old that she was discovered by director Max Reinhardt and decided to study acting in his school in Berlin.

Acting

She landed her first role in 1930 in a German film called Money on the Street, however she gained recognition for acting in her nude role for the controversial film Ecstasy and gained Hollywood attention to immediately contract her under MGM[4].

Hedy Lamarr married Austrian munitions dealer Fritz Mandl in 1933 after he fell in love with when she played in Sissy, however realized that "he was the absolute monarch in his marriage" and fleed to London with the weaponry knowledge she gained from Mandl and divorced in 1937[2]. Arriving in the United States, she continued acting in American films such as Algiers, Boom Town and Tortilla Flat to become an immediate box-office sensation[1].

Invention

While her career was taking off, she and her friend George Antheil received a patent for developing a radio signaling device called "Secret Communications System" that was capable of changing radio frequencies to prevent enemies from decoding messages[1]. She tried to address the ongoing problem of military enemies who constantly had the capability of revealing messages and having the potential to seize battlefronts. This was originally designed to help defeat the Nazi Germans, but it eventually became a crucial precursor to developing the security systems for military communication and cell phones[1]. Unfortunately, her patent expired before she had the chance of generating any profit and her intelligence continued to be unrecognized by the public[2]. Her invention was not recognized until decades later in 1997 because of the lack of understanding of how it worked. Nonetheless, Hedy and Antheil were awarded with the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award and hedy was the first woman to receive the BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award which is equivalent to the Oscars for inventions[1]. She was also inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014 for developing the frequency hopping technology and was dubbed as "the mother of Wifi"[2].

Death

She eventually married six times and had children in the United States. She became a U.S. citizen in 1953 and lived in Orlando, Florida until she died on January 19, 2000 at 85 years old, but her technology continues to be utilized everyday in the 21st century[2].

Footnotes

[1] (A&E Networks Television, 2014)

[2] (Cheslak, 2018)

[3] (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2022)

[4] (Home, n.d.)

References

A&E Networks Television. (2014, April 2). Hedy Lamarr. Biography.com. Retrieved December 5, 2022, from https://www.biography.com/actor/hedy-lamarr

Cheslak, C. (2018). Hedy Lamarr. National Women's History Museum. Retrieved December 5, 2022, from https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/hedy-lamarr

Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (2022, August 18). Hedy Lamarr. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 5, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hedy-Lamarr

Home. Famous Scientists. (n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2022, from https://www.famousscientists.org/hedy-lamarr/