[Merrick]

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.

[Rockingham]

Like Jules Verne's stories, a patent is simply an idea, and not always a workable idea. A patent lawyer friend of mine assures me that almost all of the patents he obtains for his individual clients are worthless. The useful patents are obtained for professional inventors, scientists, and technologists and the organizations that employ them.

Lamar's patent for radio frequency rotation as a means of controlling a torpedo was never developed into a device. A radio controlled torpedo was beyond the technology of the era.

So, if Lamar's patent never resulted in a device, how did it influence later technology? Did someone working on communications devices decades later read her patent? Was it discussed in technology publications? Nope.

Like Jules Verne, Hedy Lamar deserves credit for an idea that was ahead of its time. It goes too far though to argue that her patent provided the inspiration for later technological development.