The Movie Star Who Invented WiFi

On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent 2,292,387 was granted to Hedy Kiesler Markey and George Antheil for a "Secret Communication System." It described controlling torpedoes using frequency-hopping radio signals nearly impossible to jam. The U.S. Navy ignored it. Hedy Kiesler Markey was better known as Hedy Lamarr, one of the most famous actresses in Hollywood. A movie star inventing sophisticated radio guidance seemed implausible. But she did.

Lamarr was born in Vienna in 1914. Her first husband, Friedrich Mandl, was an Austrian arms dealer who sold to the Nazis. She attended his business meetings, absorbing everything engineers discussed. When the marriage became intolerable, she fled to London, then Hollywood. Her collaborator was George Antheil, a composer whose "Ballet Mecanique" required 16 synchronized player pianos.

Lamarr realized the mechanism synchronizing pianos could synchronize radio frequencies. If transmitter and receiver hopped between frequencies in a predetermined pattern, the signal would be nearly impossible to intercept. Their patent used a piano roll to manage 88 frequency changes. The Navy classified it and did nothing.

a player piano -- lamarr and antheil adapted the piano roll mechanism of synchronized player pianos to control frequency-hopping in their 1942 patent. source: wikimedia commons

Frequency-hopping was rediscovered in the 1960s. By the 1990s, it was foundational for WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and cell phones. In 1997, Lamarr and Antheil received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award. She was 83. She reportedly said she was glad someone finally understood what she had done.

Lamarr was not a trained engineer. But she understood systems and had the creativity to see solutions where others saw complexity. Every time a device connects to WiFi, a signal hops between frequencies -- invisible and secure. A movie star's idea, still working decades later.