Actress Hedy Lamarr Invented Wireless Technology

In a strange twist that would be great to include in your next customer newsletter, Hedy Lamarr, the famous Hollywood leading lady from the 1940s, is the co-inventor of spread spectrum, frequency-hopping wireless technology that is the basis for most wireless alarm systems, cordless phones, WiFi, and Bluetooth.

The invention was recently revealed as part of an upcoming biography on Lamarr, who starred in such blockbuster movies as "Samson and Delilah" with Victor Mature. The book, "Hedy's Folly" by Richard Rhodes, is already set to be made into a movie on the starlet.

Lamarr, along with co-inventor George Antheil, developed spread spectrum prior to World War II, specifically with the U.S. Navy in mind as a torpedo-guidance system. The system allowed submarines hop frequencies to avoid detection and signal jamming.

Patent No. 2,292,387 is actually issued under Lamarr's married name at the time, Hedy Kiesler Markey.


Lamarr's most famous role was as Delilah in 1949's "Samson and Delilah." She died in 2000 at 86.

Lamarr reportedly got her inventive skills from her father. Spread spectrum wireless was just one of her many inventions. Others include a "fluorescent dog collar, a skin-tautening technique, suggested modifications to the Concorde airliner and a bouillon-like cube that would create a carbonated beverage when mixed with water - a project for which Howard Hughes reportedly 'lent her a pair of chemists,'" according the article.

It's an amazing piece of trivia and that's why Hedy Lamarr deserves the title as the "First Lady of Wireless." (For "Blazing Saddles" fans like me, that's Hedy, not Hedley!)