Posted on 03/08/2018 12:25:24 PM PST by nickcarraway
Isn't it hard to believe how a beautiful actress wasn't taken seriously as the genius inventor that she was?
Along with digital video and consumer drones — cf. this week’s Leaning into the Wind — one of the greatest boons to documentaries over the past decade has been previously unheard recordings of deceased people, the latest beneficiary being Alexandra Dean’s excellent Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. Tapes of Lamarr from 1990 are among the primary source for exploring her life, which was a prime example of how it’s not always easy being the best at something — and when you’re the best at having an aesthetically pleasing face, it can make it all the more difficult to be taken seriously in other departments. (To some, she’s the source of a running joke about Harvey Korman’s character’s name in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, hence Brooks being Bombshell’s first on-screen interviewee, followed by the Saddles gag in question.)
The fact that she appeared naked in the famously racy, pre-code film Ecstasy made it all the more difficult for men to believe she could be smart. Even though her big brain came up with the basic structure of what later became wifi during World War II, her innovations were ignored at the time because she was a pretty lady. One shudders to think how much worse it would have been if she were blonde. Because they’re dumb!
Not rated.
Opens Friday at the Clay Theater.
Glad you put up a picture. She was a beauty.
What did she give the Navy? A gagdet?
Or an idea?
This Hedy Lamarr as an inventor is a bunch of Hooeeey. All she came up with is the concept of radio hopping.
Big Deal.
George Lucas has come up with the concept of laser swords.
But did he invent an actual one?
Nope.
Hedy Lamaar was a wonderful actress and stunningly beautiful woman but NOT an inventor of note.
That is all Hollywood invention and for all the Freepers who are normally very skeptic of anything coming out of Tinsletown, it is very surprising to see you all falling for all this glamour(see original meaning)
Amazing how many Freepers are falling for this story.
“Buck Rodgers” as a concept is alot different from Neil Armstrong and NASA putting Man on the moon.
Yey people run with this fable about Ms. Lamarr.
Unreal!
Can’t think of Hedy without thinking of Hedley!
You got this from Talk Magazine, right?
Without a sense of humor.
1942-08-US2292387A US Grant Priority date 1941-06-10
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e0/dd/4e/0e04d56d1d7604/US2292387.pdf
Without George Antheil, her idea won’t never have gotten to this elementary stage yet he is never mentioned as the”father” of frequency hopping nor “wifi” Nor movies made of his engineering accomplishments
Nor the informant Hedy gleaned from her industrialist and fascist husband, Friedrich Mandl.
Her contribution was the “piano roll” I wager.
Walked away from an unhappy marriage to an Austrian Fascist weapons manufacturer in 1937. Was sequestered to disrupt acting career, forced to attendance of meetings at his side. Former husband’s associates were aware of developments in radio guided munitions and openly discussed details in front of HL.
Opportunity developed to disguise herself as a maid and sneak out of Austria, incidentally escaping persecution for ancestry. She later used knowledge gleaned from former husbands contacts at business meetings, to formulate method to avoid radio jamming systems, which had been a topic of discussion.
The Germans falsely believed U.S. had developed chemical weapons based on university chemistry publications, and refrained from using their stockpile, fearing a retaliatory attack in kind. They anticipated other theoretical weapons developments of the U.S., which were not in fact explored at that time.
Germans fielded remote control air launched bombs during the war—Fritz X (X-1). Used such to strike the Italian Battleship Roma, part of a naval fleet which was defecting from the AXIS Powers to Allied Operations in the Mediterranean.
Roma was on a par with the Kriegsmarine Battleship Bismark. Almost 1400 were lost from a successful hit by a single guided glide-bomb.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hedy-lamarr-not-just-a-pr/
https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/bomb-guided-fritz-x-x-1
http://www.learning-history.com/italian-battleship-roma/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqRj4KPaliQ
Not really...
Never mind Friedrich Mandl found her mathematical abilities useful in technical discussions.
Actually, composer and concert pianist George Antheil was familiar with multiplexed control of pianolas through punched hole coding on a paper roll. He suggested the scheme, which was also used for control of various mechanical equipment (looms), and served as a forerunner to IBM’s use of stacked, punched, paper cards for programming of digital computers.
“Where’d white women at?!”
LOL, the pianola control was probably the forerunner of those funny rolls of paper tape with the holes punched in them as a mainframe backup!
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