In Vienna in 1914, a girl named Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born. In her late teens, she studied at a famous acting school in Berlin. She made her first movie in 1933, which was quite scandalous for its time, with a heavily edited version premiering in the US. Her beauty was recognized immediately, and she was signed by MGM in 1937. Louis B. Mayer (head of MGM) gave her the last name of Lamarr, and thus began the career of actress Hedy Lamarr.
Hedy Lamarr led a somewhat typical Hollywood lifestyle. She married six times in her life, and had a couple children. She had scandals, such as her first movie and reported shoplifting in the 1950's. She was best known in America for her roles in such films as "Algiers" (1938) and "Samson and Delilah" (1949). Some people have considered her the most beautiful of Hollywood's leading ladies of the era; however, she was outshined by actresses such as Ingrid Bergman and Katherine Hepburn. In 1966, she published her autobiography.
The thing that separated Hedy Lamarr from just about all other actresses was her first marriage. She first married in 1933 to Friedrich Mandl, who was the chairman of Hirtenberger Patronen-Fabrik, an armaments firm. Friedrich specialized in grenades and shells, but began work on military aircraft in the mid-1930's. Lamarr learned many things from her first husband in this area. Their marriage ended by 1937, so she moved to Hollywood to try her luck in the movies. While living there in 1940, she began a conversation with her neighbor one day: George Antheil, a man born in Trenton, NJ, but moved to Europe to be a pianist, eventually returning to the US and settling in Hollywood as a film composer. Lamarr told Antheil that she was thinking about leaving Hollywood to devote her time to the National Inventors Council in Washington DC. They discussed the idea about radio controlled torpedoes, and she brought up her idea about "frequency hopping", which was a new concept at the time. Antheil explained how he thought that could work, and the two were off on their road to an invention. The analogy Antheil used was some of the choreography and musical stylings he'd used while working in Europe. Soon, the idea included a paper similar to piano-player rolls, and in the end it allowed for 88 frequencies, just like the 88 keys on a piano.
In December 1940, Lamarr and Antheil wrote to the National Inventors Council and gave their description of their device. The chairman of the council suggested they continue their work, and with the help of a professor at the California Institute of Technology, they had a patent granted to them on August 11, 1942. The invention was the first of its kind: it allowed for an airplane to stear a torpedo while high in the air. The Navy wasn't as interested in the invention, and turned its back on the invention and its inventors. Lamarr raised funds for the project and Antheil did his best trying to convince the Navy that the project could work. Ultimately, the invention wasn't used, and it wasn't until 1957 that the idea was picked up again by some engineers from the Sylvania Electronic Systems Division in Buffalo, NY. In 1962, the device (now electronic instead of using paper rolls) was used in ships blockading Cuba. Lamarr/Entheil's patent had expired by this time.
Most patents that have been granted since that time, whether related to radar jamming or not, have been compared with Lamarr and Antheil's patent as their basis. The idea and the device created were twenty years ahead of their time, even if the physical structure of it was somewhat quaint. Even though the Navy shunned the device, it eventually ended up including a version of it in some way later on.
So, this typical actress of foreign origin, who led a normal Hollywood life, turned out to have invented something that ended up being a major ahead-of-its-time weapon.
Bet you didn't know that!
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