How Did Hedy Lamarr Change Communications Technology?

to make meaningful social commentary. In a sense, this succinct SoundBite offers more insight into Lamar's life and legacy than any headshot or publicity photo ever could. But understanding the context of the film star's words provides even more meaning into the boundary breaking successes and unexpected influence she continues to have more than two decades after her death. She was born with the name hedvig Eva Maria Kis on

November ninth of nineteen fourteen in Austria. She took an early interest in the performing arts, but seemed equally enchanted with science and engineering. For the article this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke via email with Alexandra Dean, director of the documentary A Bombshell. The Hetty Lamar Story she said Hetty Lamar grew up in a wealthy, middle class family in Vienna, where she learned classical piano and

enjoyed ballet, opera and chemistry. She left tinkering with her gadgets and took part her music box and smashed a light bulb to see how it worked. She became an actress because she thought it would be more fun than school, so she forged a note from her mother allowing her ten hours away from classes, and she went to her first audition. At seventeen years old. Lamar scored her first

film role. She was already turning heads for her stunning good looks, something that would both serve and arguably hinder her cess Hostiff Works also spoke via email with Vincent Brooke, an author and UCLA Media Studies lecturer. He said she was too beautiful for her own good. Her glamour queen sex goddess persona kept her from being seen for the brilliant, complex person that she was. Lamar wed Austrian munitions dealer Fritz Mandel in nineteen thirty three, but the marriage didn't

last long. She later said of the union, I knew very soon that I could never be an actress. While I was his wife. He was the absolute monarch in his marriage. I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded and imprisoned, having no mind, no life of its own. During their marriage, Lamar was often spotted on Mandell's arm as he kept company with friends and business partners, many

of whom had alleged ties to the Nazi Party. By nineteen thirty seven, Mamamarr had had enough and fled her marriage, her former life, and all ties to Austria. She headed to London and soon signed a contract with Hollywood's Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studio under the name that we know her by today. Her first American film, Algiers, kicked her career into high gear, and soon Lamar was a household name. She was reportedly the model for Disney's Snow White and

the inspiration for DC Comics Catwoman. In the early years of her newfound fame, Lamar made a hobby of invention and of dating some of Hollywood's most famous and infamous men, including Howard Hughes. The pilot and businessman reportedly took Lamar along to tour airplane factories and asked for Lamar's input on aviation design and theory, but it wasn't until nineteen forty two that Lamar's innovative thinking inspired an unprecedented invention.

In collaboration with composer George Antil, Lamar came up with an all electronic device that minimized the jamming of radio signals. Dean explained during World War Two, Hetty's mother was trapped in Vienna, and since she was Jewish, she was in great danger. Hetty already lived in Hollywood and was helping her mother escape to America. She got as far as London, but it was not safe across the Atlantic because every

American ship was getting blown up by the Nazis. Hetty was terrified her mother would die in the London blps, and so every night she worked on inventing a remote controlled torpedo so advanced that it would be able to hunt down and blow up every Nazi submarine in the Atlantic, thus securing safe passage to the US. To make sure the Nazis couldn't hack the radio signal for her torpedo and send it back to blow up the Allied ship that launched it, she created a secret communication system that

couldn't be hacked. This secret communications system utilized changing radio frequently to prevent enemies from decoding messages. A Multiple radio frequencies were used to broadcast a radio signal which changed frequencies at split second intervals in an apparently random manner. To anyone listening, it would just sound like noise, but the signal would be clear if both the sender and

receiver hopped frequencies at the same time. Although the technology was never used in wartime, it wound up playing a critical role in communication methods throughout the decades. She gave the patent to the US Navy. It saw its first use during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and is one of the inventions that made technology like Wi Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth, as well as devices like cell phones possible. However, by the time it was implemented, her patent had expired, meaning

Lamar never received a penny for her invention. Dean said, even though many inventors and scientists had heard the rumor that one of Hollywood's most glamorous stars had invented a secret communication system, most of them thought it was an urban legend and told me so. Hetty had never told her story to the public before, and most people who heard it dismissed it as too outlandish to be true.

Robert Price, the top historian of secret communications, was the only scientist to ask Hetty directly if she came up with the invention, but when she told him that she did, he thought it was a lie and didn't record her answer in his history of the invention. Instead, he told everyone she was a spy who stole the invention from

the Nazis. While she wasn't able to achieve critical acclaim or recognition for her technical aptitude, Lamar continued to see success in Hollywood, but her career began to decline in the nineteen fifties, and she experienced strife in her personal life through six marriages, two arrests, and a host of substance abuse issues. A well after her retirement and her retreat from the spotlight, however, Lamar finally received acknowledgment for

her achievements off screen. In nineteen ninety seven, the Electronic Frontier Foundation jointly awarded Lamar and Antyle with their Pioneer Award, and Lamar also became the first woman to receive the Invention Convention's Bulby Mass Spirit of Achievement Award. She was posthumously inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame in

twenty fourteen. Although Lamar died in the year two thousand, her legacy has lived on through film and the belated recognition of her technological contributions, and according to Dean, she was so much more than the silver screen star who turned heads and detracted audiences. Dean said, when I first listened to Hetty's voice on tape, I was bowled over by her sense of humor. She's so funny and quirky.

The first thing she said on the tape was I think I'll be able to control people after my death, And sometimes I think she meant to scare whomever listened to the tape and set out to tell her story. I was tickled by that idea, as she also said she knew what she had done in her life, she didn't need anyone to believe her. I loved that sense that she alone could give herself that recognition for her

gargantuan achievement. Today's episode is based on the article how Hollywood's screen siren Hetty Lamar helped pioneer Wi Fi and GPS on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by Michelle Constantinofsky. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.