IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - October 2021 - 43

History Column:
Hedy Lamarr
DOI. No. 10.1109/MAES.2021.3101776
Hugh Griffiths and Alfonso Farina , University College London, London
WC1E 6BT, U.K.
Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, 1914, in
Vienna, Austria) is best known as a Hollywood actress of
the 1940s and 1950s. She starred in movies including
Boom Town (1940) with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy,
The Heavenly Body (1944), and Samson and Delilah
(1949) opposite Victor Mature.
ofthis was the means used for synchronization ofthe hopping
codes at the transmitter and receiver, which was achieved in a
similar way to that used by Antheil to synchronize two pianos
whose tunes were controlled by perforated paper strips. The
figure below shows a page from the patent. In the top diagram
can be seen seven switched capacitors which determined the
seven frequencies ofthe hopping pattern.
Hedy Lamarr in The Heavenly Body, MGM, 1944
(Public Domain).
A page of drawings from Lamarr and Antheil's patent (1942).
Her early acting career was in Germany, but in 1938
she moved to Hollywood via London, and was signed by
Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). She
was married (and divorced) six times. She was honored in
1960 with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her
contribution to the motion picture industry, and she died
in January 2000 at the age of 85.
Less well known is the fact that she was also a talented
and innovative inventor. In 1942, she and avant-garde musician
and inventor George Antheil developed and patented a
communications scheme for use in a radio guidance system
for torpedoes. The key novelty was that this exploited frequency-hopping
both so as not be discovered by an opponent
andasacountertojamming,and this maybeconsideredas a
forerunner of spread-spectrum techniques which are now
widely used in secure communications. An important aspect
Author's current address: Hugh Griffiths and Alfonso
Farina, University College London, London WC1E 6BT,
U.K. (e-mail: h.griffiths@ieee.org).
Manuscript received July 10, 2021; accepted July 27,
2021, and ready for publication July 29, 2021.
Review handled by Daniel O'Hagan.
0885-8985/21/$26.00 ß 2021 IEEE
OCTOBER 2021
The technique was not exploited directly, but was
employed by the U.S. Navy in 1957 as part ofthe radio link for
a sonobuoy. Lamarr and Antheil were posthumously inducted
into the U.S.National Inventors Hall ofFame in 2014.
Further information may be found at:
R. Rhodes, Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough
Inventions of Hedy Lamarr. New York, NY, USA:
Doubleday, 2012.
A Tale ofTwo Lives, Aug. 2018. [Online]. Available:
https://physicsworld.com/a/a-tale-of-two-lives/
A. George, " Thank this World War II-era film star for
your wi-fi, " Smithsonian Magazine, April 2019. Available:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonianinstitution/thank-world-war-ii-era-film-star-your-wi-fi180971584/
Bombshell.
The Hedy Lamarr Story (documentary
trailer), 2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼BKXAkITImGU
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The
authors would like to thank Dr. E. Detoma and Dr. S.
Maddio for useful exchange of additional information on
the subject.
IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
43

https://www.orcid.org/0000-0002-9947-5553 https://www.orcid.org/0000-0003-3247-2427 https://www.physicsworld.com/a/a-tale-of-two-lives/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/thank-world-war-ii-era-film-star-your-wi-fi-180971584/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/thank-world-war-ii-era-film-star-your-wi-fi-180971584/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/thank-world-war-ii-era-film-star-your-wi-fi-180971584/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼BKXAkITImGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼BKXAkITImGU

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