Hedy Lamarr might have been one of the most beautiful stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, but she also paved the way for Bluetooth and WiFi. Since today would mark her 101st birthday and her discoveries are even more important than her films now, Google decided to honor her with a lovely animated Doodle.
The animated short not only includes references to her work on the silver screen at MGM during the 1930s and ‘40s, but also shows off her scientific work.
Lamarr, who was born in Austria and died in 2000 at age 85, worked with composer George Antheil. The two figured out how to stop German submarines from jamming the Allies’ radio signals. She received a patent for “frequency hopping.” Her work laid the foundation for tools we use every day, including WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS.
“Hedy's idea was if you could make both the transmitter and the receiver simultaneously jump from frequency to frequency, then someone trying to jam the signal wouldn't know where it was,” writer Richard Rhodes, who penned a book about Lamarr’s work, told CBS Sunday Morning in 2012.
Lamarr gave the patent to the Navy and never made any money off of her idea. “Today, frequency hopping is used with the wireless phones that we have in our homes, GPS, most military communication systems - it's very widely used,” Rhodes explained.
So, the next time you watch Ziegfeld Girl or Samson and Delilah, remember that Lamarr wasn’t just the glamorous face on the screen.