She would enter the hall under the spotlights, and the world would stand still. Hedy Lamarr was a name that in the 1940s sounded synonymous with beauty and glamour. She was called the Queen of Hollywood, and directors and billionaires lined up for her attention. But behind the glow of the movie star was another Hedy – a woman whose mind turned out to be brighter than any camera. While the audience admired her roles, she invented the technology that gave rise to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but the world recognized her genius too late.
Hedy Lamarr's childhood
Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born in Vienna in 1914. Her mother, a pianist, filled the house with music, and her father, a bank director, had views that were rare for his time: he did not divide hobbies into “male” and “female”. He told little Hedwig how machines and mechanisms worked, and at the age of five she was already taking apart music boxes and then putting them back together again – without any prompts, relying only on curiosity and logic. Science became her first love, but fate soon directed her on a different path.
At the age of 16, Hedy caught the attention of theater director Max Reinhardt. He saw in her the spark of an actress, and, despite her parents' protests, she plunged into the world of the stage. Forging her mother's signature, she secretly studied at a theater studio, and then fled to Berlin, the center of European cinema. Her first roles were modest, but in 1933 everything changed.
Scandalous fame
The film “Ecstasy” became a sensation – and a curse. For the first time in a feature film, the actress appeared on screen naked and played a female orgasm. With this, 19-year-old Hedy shocked the world. The Pope condemned the film, it was banned in the USA, and Hitler later allowed the release of an abridged version. Fame fell on Hedy, but with it – a scandal. Parents, frightened by their daughter's reputation, found her a husband – Fritz Mandl, an arms magnate and millionaire.
Mandl adored Hedi, but he saw her as a trophy. He tried to buy back copies of “Ecstasy”, forbade her from acting and, like a doll, took her to work meetings and conferences where military technology was discussed. Serious men considered the beauty simply a table decoration and even discussed technical secrets in her presence. But Hedi silently listened, memorized and learned – especially when it came to the radio-controlled torpedoes that Fritz was developing for the Nazis.
Escape and a new start
Life with Mandel became a prison. His connections with Hitler and Mussolini, his control and tyranny forced Headey to flee. In 1937, she left Berlin, disguised as a maid, reached London, and then crossed the Atlantic on the liner “Normandie”. On board she was noticed by Louis Bart Mayer, the head of MGM. He offered her a contract and a new name – Lamarr, inspired by the silent film star and the sound of the French word for “sea”. So Headey set foot on the land of Hollywood, where leading roles and fame awaited her.
Her beauty has become legendary – they say she inspired Disney's Snow White, and comic book creators' Wonder Woman and Catwoman.
A brilliant idea at the piano
World War II turned her life upside down. Having fled Nazi influence, Hedy passionately wanted to help the Allies. She could not forget the conversations she had overheard at Mandl's meetings. He was discussing with engineers radio-controlled torpedoes – a promising weapon, but with a serious flaw: the signals were easily jammed by the enemy, and the torpedoes went off course. This question haunted her. She, a self-taught woman with an inquisitive mind, began to think: how to make radio communications elusive?
At home, Headey had set up a corner for inventions—a table with tools given to her by Howard Hughes, her lover and aircraft designer. There, she would draw diagrams and disassemble mechanisms while Hollywood slept. Even on set, in her acting trailer, she kept a notebook and a set of tools.
The answer came in 1940, when Hedy met George Antheil, a composer whose daring experiments with mechanical pianos made him an avant-garde legend. They met at a party in Hollywood and quickly found common ground, discussing not only music but also war. One day, sitting at the piano, they got talking. George played, and Hedy looked at the keys – 88 black and white notes, each with its own sound. “What if the radio signal switched in the same way?” she said. “From frequency to frequency, in a secret rhythm that only the people know?”
The idea was simple but brilliant: if the signal didn’t stay on one frequency, the enemy wouldn’t have time to intercept or jam it. Antheil took the idea. He suggested using perforated tapes—the same as those used in mechanical pianos—so that the transmitter and receiver would switch between frequencies in unison. They decided to go up to 88 frequencies—named after the keys of a piano—and created a system that would later be called “frequency hopping.”
In August 1942, they received patent number 2,292,387 and gave it to the US military — free of charge, for the sake of defeating the Nazis. The military took one look at Headey — a Hollywood beauty in an elegant dress — and dismissed it. Some thought the technology was too complex for the 1940s, others didn’t believe the actress was capable of such a thing. The patent was classified and ignored.
From torpedoes to Wi-Fi
While her invention was waiting for its time, Headey helped with the war in other ways: raising millions of dollars in bonds, promising kisses to generous investors. Her peak in film came in 1949 with “Samson and Delilah,” a film that captivated audiences and collected a huge box office.
But she was tired of being labeled “pretty.” “My looks are my curse,” she said, wishing the world would see her intelligence. In the 1950s, her career faded. Six marriages, three children, a move to Miami — Hedy sought silence.
But her patent was not forgotten. In the 1960s, the US military began using “frequency hopping” in secret communications systems. In 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, this technology protected ships' radio communications from interference. And in the 1980s, the Pentagon declassified it, and the principle became available to engineers. In the 1990s, it formed the basis of Bluetooth, where the signal is switched between frequencies so that devices do not interfere with each other, and Wi-Fi, where the signal is distributed to protect against interference. Headey did not receive any money for it, but her contribution changed the world.
Later fame
It was not until 1997, three years before her death, that Headey received an award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for her contributions to technology. She was 82, living in seclusion in Florida, and did not appear at the ceremony. “Well, what a surprise. It turns out I'm smart,” she replied sarcastically over the phone. Headey died in 2000, leaving behind not only films but also a world that she had imperceptibly changed.
In Austria, November 9 is now Inventor's Day, in honor of Hedy. In 2014, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in the United States. She proved that a woman can be a star and a scientist, a beauty and a genius.
Джерело: ukr.media
