Hedy Lamarr, actress, producer and inventor, pioneer of Wi-Fi
Hedwig Kiesler, known as Hedy Lamarr, was an Austrian actress, producer and inventor, born in 1914 from an Ashkenazi Jewish couple, and died in 2000. She grew up in a privileged environment, having tutors, learning several languages, taking dance and piano lessons, horseback riding or going to the opera.
Mostly known as a glamorous Hollywood icon and the first woman to appear naked and feign an orgasm on screen ("Ecstasy", 1933), history shadowed her scientific achievements and the mark she left on the history of telecommunications when she invented the founding principles of Wi-Fi.
At the beginning of World War II, to help the Allies, she developed with her friend, pianist and inventor George Antheil, a radio guidance system that uses spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology, a fundamental transmission principle in telecommunications currently used for Wi-Fi, satellite positioning or military encrypted links.
They patented their invention on June 10, 1941 and immediately made it royalty-free to the US Army. Completely unnoticed at first, it was only 21 years later, with the progress of electronics, that the US Army saw a use for it. However, their patent having expired and being in the public domain, transmission devices designers were free to use it and neither Lamarr nor Antheil ever received any financial compensation for it.
In 1997, Lamarr received the Electronic Frontier Foundation's award for her contribution to society, to which she responded "It’s about time!". From the 2000s onwards, she became a symbol of innovation and design: an Austrian invention award bears her name, her birthday (November 9) marks Inventor's Day in German-speaking countries and, in 2014, she and her associate George Antheil were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
See some of her most famous quotes on the next photo.
@ Adama Toulon - Julie Henry Poutrel
