Chances are that you have been doing one or more of the following within the last 24 hours:
🛜 Scrolling on the Internet while enjoying WiFi (in fact, you’re probably reading this blog doing so)
🎧 Using a Bluetooth headset to listen to your favorite podcast or music.
🧭 Traveling to an unfamiliar destination, using GPS as your guide.
But did you know that a 28-year-old woman laid the basis for these technologies during World War II?
Meet Hedy Lamarr, one of the women who built the internet.
Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1914. She was an actress and innovator who pioneered the technology that would one day form the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth.
Her father, a bank director, inspired her curiosity. At five years of age, she could be found taking apart and reassembling her music box to understand how the machine operated.
However, her brilliant mind was ignored, and her beauty took center stage when movie director Max Reinhardt discovered her at age 16.
She later fled to Paris, London, and from there to Hollywood to continue her career as an actress. She played alongside people like Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy. And, in 1940, she met George Antheil at a dinner party.
Her contribution to the Internet
Together, they invented and perfected a secure radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes during WWII. It would form the basis for cellular technologies like WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS.
The Secret Communications System
The system involved “frequency hopping” among radio waves, with both transmitter and receiver hopping to new frequencies together. This prevented the interception of the radio waves, thereby allowing the torpedo to find its intended target.
Not a Moneymaker
After creating it, Lamarr and Antheil sought a patent and military support for the invention. They were granted the patent in 1942, but the US Navy decided against implementing the new system.
In the end, the patent expired before they saw a penny from it, and it wasn’t until 1997 that she received any awards for her invention.
More Women Who Built The Internet?
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And, on my podcast Women Disrupting Tech, I interview modern-day Hedy Lamarrs, who are changing the face of tech and inspiring you to follow in their footsteps.
Women Disrupting Tech | The Podcast 