[stanne]

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”

[Rockingham]

Just how did Hedy Lamar's patent become "foundational to modern Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS." Did the researchers for those innovations get stumped and then come across Lamar's patent and apply its idea to their work? I doubt that. The patent has been spun into a "just so" story that is unconnected from the facts and distorts how technological innovations come about.

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.