Posted on 04/16/2026 8:45:24 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Hedy Lamarr lived a remarkable life as an actress of Hollywood’s Golden Age after leaving Europe shortly before the start of World War II. Fleeing a restrictive marriage in Austria in 1937, Lamarr arrived in Hollywood and skyrocketed to fame, starring in films like Algiers (1938), Ziegfeld Girl (1941), and Samson and Delilah (1949). However, only late in her life was she recognized for a lesser-known aspect of her work: inventing.
During World War II, she invented a “Secret Communication System,” together with avant-garde composer George Antheil. The system used the concept of frequency hopping to guide torpedoes in a way that was un-jammable. They received a US patent for their invention, but it was never adopted by the US Navy during the war, and Antheil and Lamarr never received a penny for their work. The technology was later used for military communications, including during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and was a precursor to modern-day technologies such as Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth...
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalww2museum.org ...
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Frequency hopping through history... From Wikipedia :
“In 1899, Guglielmo Marconi experimented with frequency-selective reception in an attempt to minimise interference.[3]
The earliest mentions of frequency hopping in open literature are in US patent 725,605, awarded to Nikola Tesla on March 17, 1903,[4] and in radio pioneer Jonathan Zenneck’s book Wireless Telegraphy (German, 1908, English translation McGraw Hill, 1915),[5][a] although Zenneck writes that Telefunken had already tried it. Nikola Tesla doesn’t mention the phrase “frequency hopping” directly, but certainly alludes to it. Entitled Method of Signaling, the patent describes a system that would enable radio communication without any danger of the signals or messages being disturbed, intercepted, interfered with in any way.[6]
The German military made limited use of frequency hopping for communication between fixed command points in World War I to prevent eavesdropping by British forces, who did not have the technology to follow the sequence.[7] Jonathan Zenneck’s book Wireless Telegraphy was originally published in German in 1908, but was translated into English in 1915 as the enemy started using frequency hopping on the front line.
In 1920, Otto B. Blackwell, De Loss K. Martin, and Gilbert S. Vernam filed a patent application for a “Secrecy Communication System”, granted as U.S. Patent 1,598,673 in 1926. This patent described a method of transmitting signals on multiple frequencies in a random manner for secrecy, anticipating key features of later frequency hopping systems.[4]
A Polish engineer and inventor, Leonard Danilewicz, claimed to have suggested the concept of frequency hopping in 1929 to the Polish General Staff, but it was rejected.[8]
In 1932, U.S. patent 1,869,659 was awarded to Willem Broertjes, named “Method of maintaining secrecy in the transmission of wireless telegraphic messages”, which describes a system where “messages are transmitted by means of a group of frequencies... known to the sender and receiver alone, and alternated at will during transmission of the messages”.
During World War II, the US Army Signal Corps was inventing a communication system called SIGSALY, which incorporated spread spectrum in a single frequency context. However, SIGSALY was a top-secret communications system, so its existence was not known until the 1980s.
In 1942, actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received U.S. patent 2,292,387 for their “Secret Communications System”,[9][10] an early version of frequency hopping using a piano-roll to switch among 88 frequencies to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. They then donated the patent to the U.S. Navy.[11]
Frequency-hopping ideas may have been rediscovered in the 1950s during patent searches when private companies were independently developing direct-sequence Code Division Multiple Access, a non-frequency-hopping form of spread-spectrum.[citation needed] In 1957, engineers at Sylvania Electronic Systems Division adopted a similar idea, using the recently invented transistor instead of Lamarr’s and Antheil’s clockwork technology.[9][dubious – discuss] In 1962, the US Navy utilized Sylvania Electronic Systems Division’s work during the Cuban Missile Crisis.[12]
A practical application of frequency hopping was developed by Ray Zinn, co-founder of Micrel Corporation. Zinn developed a method allowing radio devices to operate without the need to synchronize a receiver with a transmitter. Using frequency hopping and sweep modes, Zinn’s method is primarily applied in low data rate wireless applications such as utility metering, machine and equipment monitoring and metering, and remote control. In 2006 Zinn received U.S. patent 6,996,399 for his “Wireless device and method using frequency hopping and sweep modes.”
Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp - This is a Song for Miss Hedy Lamarr
Vinnie Colaiuta on drums.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maa1xTKu7aQ
Hedy Lamarr was Jewish, BTW. She was born into a wealthy Austrian family, with a banker father and a pianist mother (who later converted to Catholic). Hedy was not a practicing Jew, and she had to hide being Jewish in Hollywood in those years.
It is a nice story but I am not so sure that Lamar’s patent was consequential to later developments of frequency skipping. Due to the technical limitations of radio at the time, Lamar’s patent was never more than a bare idea without an actual device being developed. Only when other researchers investigated and patented frequency skipping devices years later in other contexts did Lamar’s patent come to light in the research for their patents.
Wrong. It was a precursor to GPS and WiFi
Not bad. For a girl. Not bad for Rambo.
“ During World War II, actress Hedy Lamarr co-invented a “Secret Communication System” to prevent enemy jamming of Allied radio-controlled torpedoes. Together with composer George Antheil, she developed frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology to secure naval torpedo guidance, which was patented in 1942. While initially ignored by the Navy, this invention became foundational to modern Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS”
Hedy was married to an abusive nazi (redundant) arms dealer. She fled Austria because of him. Her mother, an accomplished pianist, converted to Catholicism and raised her Christian. She brought her mother to the US.
He father was an engineer and taught her engineering. He died before his wife, Hedy’s mother, went the US
The 2-season TV series, “Timeless” (time travel) has an episode “Hollywoodland” that featured “Hedy Lamarr” and touched on her frequency hopping invention as the foundation for WiFi/Bluetooth.
A short 54-second clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ITBm1RyREI
beautiful Jewish girl my fav of that era
By way of analogy, did the Jules Verne story of a rocket to the Moon launched from Florida lead to the development of the V-2 and our Moon landing program? Did Hitler read Jules Verne and then tell von Braun to make me a bunch of those to bombard London? Did the US Congress decide on a Florida launch site for our manned space program because key people had read Jules Verne?
No, what actually happened is that the hard facts of physics, the state of science and technology, and demands of an era guide new developments. Verne and Lamar may be said to have anticipated some technical aspects far in the future. That is a more modest claim for them but still worthy of note.
No, that’s not fair. Verne had a fantastical idea for a story. Hedy developed and patented an actual technology and yes multiband frequency-hopping comms is part of those modern implementations. Hedy had the patent.
One Saturday I watched an old movie and was amazed by the female lead. She had everything. So I looked her up — it was Hedy Lamarr.
Similar incompetence was the refusal of the AAC to properly deploy fighter escorts for heavy bombers in 1943. The Bomber Mafia was wedded to the idea of unescorted raids because those 10 Ma Deuces and defensive formations could do it all, right!? The result was huge losses of aircrew and aircraft that didn’t have to be.
No AI slop from this YouTuber:
The P 38 Lighting and the Bomber Mafia’s Failure In World War Two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFI8frj1NbM&list=PLD2EcpzcvT-tbzZrbEuetBOalWtEiILpF&index=1
“In WW2 during 1943 the U.S. Army Air Force failed to provide heavy bombers with fighter escorts when flying deep into Germany. This was due to both incompetence and intent on the part of the Bomber Mafia, resulting in huge losses of U.S. Airmen and equipment.
The solution was right in front of them the whole time, they just refused to take advantage of it until losses were so high by late 1943 that they had no choice.
The P-38 Lightning had been able to fly deep into Germany from about mid 1942 and could have escorted all the way to Berlin and beyond by mid 1943. Not to mention the fact that the P-47 could have escorted deep into Germany early in 1943 had the USAAF simply bought the right drop tanks for it.
The is the story about how some rebels within the USAAF worked under the radar of the Bomber Mafia to get drop tanks into production for the P-38. It’s a wild ride so get your favorite beverage and come along for the ride.”
She had brains as well as beauty.
I read her autobiography, “Ecstacy and Me” some years ago. It was quite...interesting. She was a hell of a lady.
I envy you the history you have seen, and the America that you have known.
> Antheil and Lamarr never received a penny for their work <
I’m an electrical engineer and have served as an expert witness in patent litigation. In my work, I’ve actually encountered and read that patent. The idea was too far ahead of its time and could not be implemented with the technology of the day. If you look at the figure, the memory device is a spool of paper tape with holes punched in it. In the day the electronics was all vacuum tubes. Rather impractical for a torpedo. Had to wait for the transistor and integrated circuits for the invention to be practical. The term of a protection for a patent at that time was 17 years so it probably expired before anyone could actually use it.
As a side note, the US started WW II with the Mark 14 torpedo which had multiple technical problems. These were caused by the highly restrictive military budgets between the war. In WW II our Navy went to war with a torpedo that had never been live fired at an actual target!!
Towards the end of my career, the AF started using HAVE QUICK radios. These were jam resistant UHF radios that used precise timing to jump from one frequency to another. Grandchild of Hedy’s invention?
“They loved Bob hope bing crosby and Hedy road to films, looked up her bio and this…”
That was Dorothy Lamour.
I don’t know. What is this? The inquisition? I’m not under oath in a court room
I’m going by what is written. If it’s wrong it’s wrong. I don’t care
The point made in most reports is she didn’t get proper credit. And definitely not from the Navy.
What if the person who helped shape the tech in your pocket was also a glamorous movie star—with a secret life as an inventor?
Most kids learn that great ideas come from labs and universities. Hedy Lamarr’s story flips that belief upside down. In Hedy Lamarr and the Secret of Wi‑Fi,
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