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Wireless Technology

Wireless Technology

Did you know that the inventor of Wireless technology was Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr?

Hedy Lamarr is a woman who marked history. In addition to her successful film career, she also went down in history as the inventor of a device that preceded wireless communication systems.

At the age of 19, through a marriage arranged by her parents, she becomes the wife of the Austrian-American arms manufacturer, Fritz Mandl. This marriage involved attending dinners with important people of the time, such as Hitler and Mussolini. Always attending these dinners, she listened and learned a lot about applied sciences, thus becoming a connoisseur of electrical phenomens. As a result, she invents a device that preceded the wireless communication systems used today on smartphones, tablets or GPS. The prototype operated using radio waves and used frequency hopping to block interception of transmitted information.

Hady Lamarr became famous for patenting the technological method, called the "Secret Communication System", which became important for the security of military communications and mobile phone technology in 1942.

Inspired by the way the piano works, along with George Antheil, Hedy Lamarr supported the idea of ​​controlling torpedoes by radio. In the past, radio control seemed like an ingenious idea, but impossible to achieve. Thus was born the concept of frequency hopping, the initial form of today's spread spectrum communications technology. The patent was issued to her maiden and married name after her second husband, Hedy Kiesler Markey, on August 11, 1942.

Although the invention was donated to the US Navy, it did not use it in combat during World War II, being reconsidered in the 1950s. The invention was the basis for the development of the wireless communication systems we use today. Now the concept is applied by the army and has become the technology behind the latest internet transmissions and the most modern mobile phones.

On March 12-th, 1997, Hedy Lamarr was honored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for her contribution, his son, Anthony Loder, receiving the diploma. Although the US Navy only adopted this technology in the 1960s, the principles of his invention are today incorporated into many modern appliances and devices, such as Wi-Fi, GPS, CDMA and Bluetooth. Thanks to this invention, the name of actress Hedy Lamarr was included in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.