Hedy Lamarr, Inventor

People are as likely to believe that screen siren Hedy Lamarr invented spread-spectrum wireless technology as they are to believe that screen stalwart Ronald Reagan would someday be President. Turns out, both are true!

A recent article in the Economist projected the future of wireless and computing technologies, but took a moment to look back at a little-known story of its past. Hedy Lamarr, who died in 2000, endures as the image of a femme fatale, but her most enduring creation may have been scientific. In 1942 she and George Antheil (experimental composer and torturer of player pianos) were awarded a patent for a "secret communication system."

Lamarr, it seems, had been married to an Austrian arms dealer and developed some personal expertise in the matter of torpedoes. She was well aware of the difficulty in communicating with torpedoes once they had been launched -- long guide wires were out of the question, but radio signals would alert enemies (and permit signal jamming). By the start of WWII, she had divorced her husband and fled to the US, where she became a movie star. In 1940 she met Antheil, who also opposed the Nazis, at a Hollywood dinner party. She enlisted his technical help and created a way to make signals difficult to jam, using "frequency hopping."

By rapidly changing the broadcast frequency, the signal would be almost impossible to follow -- but for jammers and torpedoes alike. But a player-piano-like mechanism of punch tapes could keep the torpedo receiver and the controlling broadcast in perfect synch, in effect choreographing the way the two would switch frequencies as the torpedo moved toward its target.

The American armed forces apparently did not take the idea seriously at the time. It wasn't until the 1960s that electronic technologies could perform the precise player-piano choreography they had envisioned. (The Economist reports that the technology was in place to secure communications during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.) And "frequency-hopping spread spectrum" or FHSS technology is used in some cellular phone standards and the new Bluetooth short-range wireless protocol.

So when the day soon arrives that your toaster tells your coffeepot to wake up and make the coffee, think of player pianos, and think of Hedy.

Revisit the film career of this dark-haired beauty, then learn more about her scientific explorations and accomplishments

Learn more about Bluetooth, the wireless appliance standard that makes use of the same technical principles as Lemarr's & Antheil's invention

Visit Paul Lehrman's Antheil site, featuring information about Antheil's astonishing and recently revived Ballet Mecanique

Read the feature in the June 21, 2003 Economist [fee required]