As a Hollywood film star in the 1930s and 1940s, Hedy Lamarr at one point was called "the most beautiful woman in the world." What she was less known for was her scientific intellect.
Lamarr had a natural curiosity about the world around her. As young as age 5, she would spend time taking apart and rebuilding her music box to understand how it worked. But her technical mind was overshadowed by her looks-at 16, she got her first film role and quickly became an international icon.
As her acting career continued to take off during World War II, Lamarr became restless, feeling that she should do more to contribute to the Allies' war efforts. Together with her friend Antheil, Lamarr came up with a groundbreaking new form of wireless communication known as spread spectrum (光谱).The concept was to create a wireless signal that could hop from frequency to frequency, making it impossible to track or jam. They received a patent for their technology in 1942, but the military refused to implement (实施) it in their war effort.
The technology sat unused for years, until one day the military revived it in the 1960s and the system "spread like wildfire. "It became the backbone of Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and a range of wireless communication mechanisms we rely on today. By the time the technology was implemented, Lamarr's patent had been due, and she never received a single payment for her revolutionary invention.
Hedy Lamarr played the role she was expected to play in Hollywood — a beautiful object to admire on the big screen. If she yielded to society's expectations in other ways, communication as we know it could look completely different today.
