Hedy Lamarr Biography

Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Maria Keislar, was once known as the most beautiful woman in the world.

She starred in films like Boom Town (1940), White Cargo (1942), and Samson and Delilah (1949) on the silver screen of Hollywood. Her glamorous looks also inspired the original artwork for characters like Snow White and Catwoman. Lamarr’s image as a Hollywood sex symbol often overshadowed her interests and accomplishments in science and engineering to the public. In fact, Lamarr invented the technology that eventually formed the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and bluetooth systems.

Lamarr was born in Vienna, Austria on November 9th, 1914 to a Jewish family. According to Dr. Alice George, writer for Smithsonian Magazine, Lamarr’s interest in science and technology began as a young child and “at age 5, she dismantled a music box and reassembled it, and never relinquished her curiosity.” Despite her passion for science and engineering, Lamarr began her acting career as a teenager. According to Colleen Cheslak, writer for National Women’s History Museum, she was “discovered by director Max Reinhardt at age 16,” and “studied acting with Reinhardt in Berlin and was in her first small film role by 1930, in a German film called Geld auf der Straβe (“Money on the Street”).” When Lamarr was 19, she married Fritz Mandl who was 13 years her senior. Lamarr’s marriage made her unhappy. She said, “I knew very soon that I could never be an actress while I was his wife… I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded and imprisoned, having no mind, no life of its own.” For example, Lamarr was “forced to host and smile on demand amongst Mandl’s friends and scandalous business partners, some of whom were associated with the Nazi party,” Cheslak wrote. Lamarr managed to escape Mandl in 1937 as she fled to Paris and then London. In London, Lamarr’s was introduced to Louis B. Mayer, of the famed MGM Studios. Mayer saw her potential as a star and sent her to Hollywood.

Lamarr became an international celebrity when she starred in Hollywood films on the silver screen. But, she never relinquished her interest in science and technology, and passion to invent. “Since she made two or three movies a year, each one taking about a month to shoot, she had spare time to fill… In Hollywood she set up an inventor’s corner in the drawing room of her house, complete with a drafting table and lamp and all the necessary drafting tools,” wrote Richard Rhodes, an American Historian and author of Lamarr’s biography. Lamarr’s passion became a hobby and she created a range of inventions and ideas. For example, Lamarr created “an upgraded stoplight and a tablet that dissolved in water to make a soda similar to Coca-Cola (Cheslak).” She also “bought a book of fish and a book of birds and looked at the fastest of each kind. She combined the fins of the fastest fish and the wings of the fastest bird to sketch a new wing design for Hughes’ [her husband at the time] planes (Cheslak).” In a biographical documentary called Bombshell, Lamarr said “Inventions are easy for me to do… I don’t have to work on ideas, they come naturally.” 

Lamarr was an international star by the time she patented what was known as her “secret communication system” in 1942. She filed the patent with her friend George Antheil, a composer who helped create her war-time invention for radio communications. In his memoir Bad Boy of Music, Antheil recounts that she initiated their effort to invent technology for the Allies because “she did not feel comfortable sitting there in Hollywood and making lots of money when things were in such a state,” during World War II. Lamarr’s invention was officially known as a frequency-hopping spread spectrum that allowed signals to change from one frequency to another, so “Allied torpedoes couldn’t be detected by the Nazis,” explained Shivaun Field, a writer for Forbes magazine. In other words, as described in Lamarr’s induction to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, “multiple radio frequencies were used to broadcast a radio signal,

switching frequencies at split-second intervals in a seemingly random manner that would sound like mere noise to anyone listening. If both the sender and receiver of the signal hopped frequencies at the same time, the signal was clear.” 

Lamarr and Antheil offered their frequency-hopping spread spectrum to the U.S. Navy in which engineers rejected it because “it was too cumbersome (George).” Lamarr and Antheils’ patent did not expire until 1959, but the Navy “shared Lamarr’s concept with a contractor assigned to create a sonobuoy, which could be dropped into the water from an airplane to detect submarines (George).” Many others eventually used Lamarr’s design to create technology like WiFi, GPS, and bluetooth systems, which are now multi-billion dollar industries. Lamarr never made a single cent from any of her inventions, and while most people living today haven’t seen her old Hollywood movies, Hedy Lamarr’s legacy lives on through technologies that permeate all of our daily lives.

Sources: 

1. A Hedy Lamarr Invention is the Secret Communication System. (2020, October 23). National Inventors Hall of Fame. 
2. Bean, K. (2018, June 28). Forgotten Women in STEM: Hedy Lamarr. National Science and Media Museum Blog. 
3. Cheslak, C. (n.d.). Hedy Lamarr. National Women’s History Museum. Retrieved October 20, 2020, from 
4. Field, S. (2018, March 8). Hedy Lamarr: The Incredible Mind Behind Secure WiFi, GPS And Bluetooth. Forbes. 
5. George, A. (2019, April 4). Thank This World War II-Era Film Star for Your Wi-Fi. Smithsonian Magazine.