Wi-Fi was created by a Hollywood actress. A story that was kept silent for years

Hedy Lamarr is not only a movie star, but also an inventor whose work became the foundation of modern communication technologies.

Hedy Lamarr – a star who is only half-remembered

Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Kiesler on November 9, 1914 in Vienna, was an Austrian-American actress considered the most beautiful woman in the world in the 1930s and 1940s. Her roles in films such as “Samson and Delilah” and “White Cargo” brought her enormous popularity. Hedda Lamar’s popularity peaked in the 1940s. She then appeared in many famous films, including: “Boom Town” with Clark Gable, “Tortilla Flat” with Spencer Tracy. However, the actress’ public image effectively obscured her second nature – analytical and technical.

Lamarr grew up in a wealthy Jewish family. Her father, a bank director, instilled in her a passion for mechanics and the operation of machines. During long walks, he explained to her how trams and printing presses worked. As a five-year-old, she disassembled and reassembled a music box to understand its mechanism. Her mother, a concert pianist, introduced her to the world of art by enrolling her daughter in ballet and piano lessons.

From debut to fame and a marriage that turned out to be a prison

Lamarr’s acting talent was noticed by director Max Reinhardt, who invited her to Berlin. In 1930, Hedy made her debut in the film “Geld auf der Straße”, but her real fame came with her role in the controversial film “Ecstasy” from 1932 with scenes that were exceptionally bold for those times (she swam naked in a lake!). It was then that her beauty began to dominate the perception of her as an artist and intellectual.

In 1933, Lamarr married Fritz Mandel, an Austrian ammunition dealer. The relationship quickly turned out to be a trap for her. The actress later recalled: “I knew very quickly that I could never be an actress as long as 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 that had to be guarded – and imprisoned – without a mind of my own, without a life of my own.” Mandl maintained contacts with people associated with the Nazis, and Lamarr, forced to attend meetings, absorbed knowledge about modern weapons and military systems. In 1937 she escaped to London.

An icon of beauty and a system that was ahead of its time

In London, fate smiled on her again. She met Louis B. Mayer from MGM, which opened the door to Hollywood. There, she delighted the audience with her charm and exotic accent, and at the same time met Howard Hughes – an entrepreneur, pilot and visionary. Hughes saw in Lamarr more than just a movie star. He provided her with technical equipment, invited her to aviation factories and introduced her to the world of engineering. Inspired, she designed new airplane wings by combining observations of the fastest fish and birds. After presenting the project, Hughes allegedly said: “You are a genius.”

Lamarr has made no secret of her passion for making things better. “Improving things comes naturally to me,” she said. She developed, among others: a new type of traffic light and a tablet that dissolves in water to create a carbonated drink. However, the most important project was created in the shadow of the approaching World War II.

In 1940, Lamarr met composer George Antheil. They were united by concern for the fate of the world and the desire to truly support the fight against the Axis countries. Antheil recalled: “Hedy said she didn’t feel comfortable sitting in Hollywood making a lot of money when things were the way they were.” Together they developed a frequency-hopping torpedo guidance system in which the transmitter and receiver simultaneously changed radio bands, preventing the signal from being intercepted. This is the distant ancestor of today’s Wi-Fi technology, which, however, was lost to the depths of history. US Patent No. 2,292,387 was granted in August 1942, but the Navy decided not to implement the technology.

Belated recognition for the “mother of Wi-Fi”

After the project was rejected, Lamarr took advantage of her popularity to become involved in selling war bonds. In 1953, she received American citizenship. The patent expired before it brought her any income, and her inventive contributions remained overshadowed by her film career for years. It wasn’t until 1997 that Lamarr and Antheil received the Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The actress also became the first woman to receive the Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award. In 2014, after her death in 2000, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. It was then that the term “mother of Wi-Fi” stuck to it, thanks to the invention of technologies that are today the basis of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS systems.