Hedy Lamarr astounded people and defied their expectations with her aptitude in both the artistic and STEM realms. A Hollywood celebrity femme fatale by day and studious inventor by night joined into an enigmatic renaissance personality. Adored for her beauty, charm, wit and acting ability, she led a successful film career worldwide producing popular works in her home country of Austria, broader Europe, and Hollywood. An immigrant who fully assimilated into USA culture, became fluent in English, and achieved celebrity status, she brought the best highlights from her homeland to her contributions in America. She gained notoriety for her co-invention with George Antheil of radio frequency-hopping to prevent jamming of WWII torpedo guidance systems, but her design interest spanned many facets including tools for everyday life and architecture. Despite being rejected initially due to 1940s electronic limitations and being ahead of its time, their concept was foundational to future Navy defense systems, and modern Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and 5G technologies.
“Hope & curiosity about the future seemed better than guarantees. The unknown was always so attractive to me...and still is.”
― Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr in a promotional still for "I Take This Woman" (1940). Photo credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 to wealthy Jewish parents, she grew up in Vienna, Austria, raised as a Catholic by her mother. Hedy rose to fame as a young actress with her 1930 film debut and international notoriety from the scandalous 1933 Czech film Ecstasy. At 18 she married wealthy Austrian munitions manufacturer Fritz Mandl, but the controlling marriage stifled her career and freedom, prompting her daring escape in 1937 to London and then America. On the voyage over, she met and convinced Louis B. Mayer of MGM studios to sign her on an attractive 7 year contract for $500/week. She reinvented herself as Hedy Lamarr and began a thrilling Hollywood career. Mayer often marketed her as “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World.”
With the acceleration of WWII across Europe Hedy was wracked with worry for her friends and family back home, especially as she attempted to evacuate her mother. She had been privy to high-level weapons and security discussions from accompanying her first husband on his munitions-dealing business meetings with top-level Nazi officials and scientists. Torpedo radio guidance systems were problematic for both sides, since the enemy could jam their control frequency and divert the weapons into friendly or refugee ships. Hedy’s voracious curiosity, memory and powerful observation habits acquired in acting led her to absorb and piece together key ideas and coupled with her fame and connections in America she had powerful and intelligent friends to collaborate with.
In 1940, she met avant-garde composer, pianist and author George Antheil and their alike unconventional minds connected immediately. During one discussion about the war, Hedy lamented on the torpedo guidance problem and famously suggested that if they could “constantly change the frequency” the enemy wouldn’t have time to find and jam it. Yet, how do you ensure the ship and torpedo switch at the exact same micro-second? Antheil provided the solution to synchronize frequency shifting by drawing on a past project, Ballet Mecanique, in which he used perforated paper player piano rolls to keep 16 player pianos playing in perfect time.
The Problem: Radio-guided torpedoes were sitting ducks. If an enemy identified their frequency, they would easily jam it and render the torpedoes useless at best, or worse, cause deadly backfire.
The Solution: Synchronize the torpedo and ship’s radios to switch frequencies in unison at micro-second speed using rotating perforated rolls (inspired by player-piano technology), essentially making it impossible to identify and jam the signals.
Their Roles:
They filed their patent "Secret Communication System" (U.S. Patent 2,292,387) on June 10, 1941. It was initially rejected by the US Navy for its intended purpose since 1940s electronics were too bulky to fit inside a standard torpedo and there was skepticism of the engineering credibility of a Hollywood actress and musical composer.
To further develop the concept, Lamarr and Antheil worked with Samuel Stuart Mackeown from Caltech, a professor of radio-electrical engineering and patent expert. A ship and torpedo would have matching rolls with the pre-planned sequence of frequencies (88 frequencies total like the 88 keys on a piano). A circuit started both rolls rotating at the same moment and drove them with constant-speed clockwork motors. Holes in the tape roll activated difference condensers (capacitors) to change the frequency and an operator pressed keys to send the rudder guidance commands. Additionally, the system could do re-synchronizing tweaks on the fly and send false signals on other frequencies to confuse enemies This made it significantly more difficult for enemy forces to intercept or jam the signal while maintaining communication between the transmitter and receiver.
Diagram from U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 for a "Secret Communication System," granted to Hedy Kiesler Markey et al. (1942). Courtesy of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
In 1957, engineers from Sylvania Electronic Systems Division in Buffalo, New York, translated the concept into a practical method using the newly invented transistor. After the Lamarr-Antheil patent expired in 1959, the US Navy deployed an updated version of the technology in their communication systems on ships during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. They continued to use frequency-hopping and spread-spectrum techniques in other defense systems, including sonobuoys and the Milstar satellite communications network.
Their pioneering patent also guided the future development of “Spread Spectrum Technology,” which is now foundational to modern Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and 5G networks.
Hedy Lamarr never received any financial compensation for her patent or idea, but she was finally honored in 1997 with the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award.
Frequency hopping itself was not a novel idea, but it had never been considered for security or used in a synchronized “spread spectrum” way like Lamarr and Antheil developed. Nikola Tesla researched the concept of changing frequencies and published in a 1903 patent US723188, "Method of Signaling”, in which he proposed sending signals across multiple frequencies in a specific secret sequence which could be understood when decoded by matching relays in the receiver, similar to using a combination lock. His idea was to keep communication private and more reliable amidst interference in noisy environments but wasn’t completely impervious/immune to jamming.
During WWI in 1918, the Germans implemented rudimentary frequency-shifting (Wellenwechsel) by manually switching their radio channels according to pre-agreed alternatives or at scheduled times to complicate British interception and prevent eavesdropping. Both sides also encoded their messages using ciphers, sometimes layering codes on top of codes, and they swapped the keys periodically to thwart deciphering by opposition.
From her childhood, Hedy had a fascination for mechanical design, technical problem solving and invention, inspired and nurtured by her father, Emil Kiesler. He explained how things work such as printing presses and street cars, and the mechanics behind engines. Her mother said “he spoiled her a bit…He would stop to explain things to her, read to her before bed, encourage her in school and sports.” At age 5 she took apart and reassembled a music box while discussing how it worked.
Hedy Lamarr reviewing architectural blueprints for the remodeling of her Bel-Air estate (c. 1940). Image via Bridgeman Images.
Shortly after arriving in Hollywood, she bonded intellectually with Howard Hughes, an aviation designer, producer and billionaire known for the Hughes H-4 or “Spruce Goose.” The two spent hours discussing engineering ideas, he introduced her and offered open access to his engineers and scientists, and he gifted her scientific equipment and a drafting table which she used for inventing in between filming and at her home. She critiqued his aircraft designs as “too slow” with their square wings and proposed new sketched designs based on the wing shapes of the fastest bird species and fish fins, essentially an early form of biomimicry.
She also was what we’d call an Architectural Creative Director in the development of the Villa LaMarr ski resort in Aspen, Colorado, providing the entirety of the vision, concept art, creative design elements, and interior and floor plan design with inspiration from her Austrian roots. W. Howard Lee, her then-husband financed the project and hired the structural architects and contractors.
Hedy was an idealist with a deep care for quality and workmanship, which led her to contemplate solutions to problems and inefficiencies she observed around her.
“Films have a certain place in a certain time period. Technology is forever.”
― Hedy Lamarr
Other Inventions:
Hedy Lamarr was a woman of her own kind, unique and impossible to fit into any single box. She is proof that technological invention and problem solving can originate from nearly anywhere. She bridged the artistic to engineering career gap and defied the boundaries pre-defined by society because she saw the world around her as a canvas on which to create and test new ideas both artistic and technological. I find similarities to myself in the recounts of her rigorous mentality, since I too came from an artistic background in ballet.
At the time she came up against many limitations on women’s perceived abilities and educational opportunities in technical fields. Coworkers and admirers had a hard time reconciling her seemingly opposite interests and characteristics. They saw a glamourous beautiful feminine woman and were caught off guard by her intellect and gravitation towards inventing. Several times when she proposed ideas or a desire to aid the war effort intellectually, she was told instead to host war-bond fundraisers, dazzle donors, and flaunt her beauty. She often expressed frustration that others couldn’t see beyond her pretty façade.
“Any girl can be glamorous. All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.”
― Hedy Lamarr
Today, with wide-open access to information through literature, the internet, and AI engines as well as accessible collegiate education, women like Hedy have greater ability and potential to build out their ideas and contribute meaningfully to innovation, engineering and science. I wonder how much more she would have created or solved with the kind of access to information and education that we have today. Her legacy continues to inspire future generations of women to challenge assumptions, pursue their ideas, and make their own contributions to engineering and innovation.
Part of our Women in Engineering series:
About the author
Elizabeth Engler is a Controls Integrator with diverse experience across controls design, programming, and software development. She enjoys logical challenges, user interface design, and programming machines to bring customer's visions to life. In her free time, Elizabeth enjoys gardening, mysteries, movies, and time with family.
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