Hedy Lamarr Honored With Google Doodle

On Monday, Google Doodle celebrated the 101st birthday of Hedy Lamarr. The Vienna-born Hollywood actress had a number of big screen appearances in the 1940s, including hits like "Come Live with Me" and “I Take This Woman” with Jimmy Stewart and Spencer Tracy, respectively.

However, her biggest achievement, which was relatively unknown to many, was her desire to help win the Second World War for the Allied forces.

Her first marriage in the 1930s to Friedrich Mandl at the age of 18 allowed her to become knowledgeable about torpedoes. Mandl was a munitions manufacturer based in Europe. During the war, Lamarr was able to help prevent the hijacking of remote-controlled torpedoes. She also played a role in the development of one version of spread-spectrum communication. This technology served as the starting point for a number of other technologies such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Hedy Lamarr Honored With Google Doodle - image credit: cnn.com

While working as an actress Lamarr met American composer George Antheil. She worked with Antheil, who was also an inventor, in perfecting a method of rapidly switching between synchronized frequencies. This method was also called frequency hopping. US patent No. 2,292,387 was granted to the Secret Communication System of the two in 1942. However, the technology was not used by the US military during the war.

But, in the 1950s, the method developed by George Antheil and Hedy Lamarr was utilized by private companies working on wireless technology. The method developed by the two is currently being used by a good number of mobile networks.

Lamarr passed away in Florida on January 20, 2000 at the age of 85. The Google Doodle honoring Hedy Lamarr on Monday showed the public life of the actress. It also showed her life as an inventor, which acknowledges her achievements out of the public eye. It also features music made by composer Adam Ever-Hadani.

Posted by George Daniels on Tuesday November 10 2015, 10:32 AM EDT. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Technology. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0