So often throughout history the scientific achievements of women have been forgotten; ignored, overshadowed and sometimes outright stolen by their male peers. For this series, Collections Assistant Kendra Bean delves into the museum’s collections in search of female trailblazers in science, technology, engineering and maths.
Hedy Lamarr was one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the silver screen. Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna in 1914, she shot to fame in Europe by appearing nude in the Austrian-Czech film Ecstasy (1933). An unhappy marriage to fascist armaments manufacturer Fritz Mandl ended in 1938 when Hedy gathered her jewels, left a dinner party, and fled to Paris. There she was discovered by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer Louis B. Mayer and offered a Hollywood contract.
Over the next 20 years Hedy left her mark on film history by playing a succession of glamorous, sensual characters in films like Algiers (1938), Boom Town (1940), White Cargo (1942), and Samson and Delilah (1949). In her private life Hedy enjoyed painting, collecting art, people-watching at Hollywood parties and—most surprising to those who knew her only as a sex symbol—inventing.
Hedy’s beautiful image concealed an interest in engineering and an intellect as sharp as a tack. ‘Hedy invented as a hobby,’ writes her biographer Richard Rhodes.
‘Since she made two or three movies a year, each one taking about a month to shoot, she had spare time to fill… When she was a girl, her father, a Viennese banker, had encouraged her interest in how the world worked, taking walks with her and explaining the mechanics of the machinery they encountered… She also had a keen sense of the world’s large and small failings, some of which she decided she could fix. 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.’
When the United States entered WWII, Hedy endeavoured to help her adopted country in the fight against the Nazis. Together with her friend, the composer George Antheil, Hedy began work on a ‘Secret Communication System’ that relied on frequency-hopping (spread-spectrum technology) to unpredictably interchange the transmission of carrier waves. Using perforated records from player pianos, the idea was that the device could be used to remotely control torpedoes without the risk of interception and jamming by enemy forces.
Hedy and George were awarded US Patent 22923878 in August 1942, and they immediately offered up the Communication System for governmental use. Unfortunately, the US Navy dismissed the invention as being too complicated to implement, and at the time they did not want to use inventions made by non-military personnel.
The patent expired after the war without Hedy’s knowledge and was ironically rediscovered during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 1960s. It has since been cited over 60 times.
Hedy could not have predicted the significance of her ideas at the time. She kept mum about her activities in the realm of science and technology; there is no mention of it in her 1966 autobiography, Ecstasy and Me. Neither is there any indication of it in the Daily Herald Archive, from which the images in this blog post were sourced. According to her obituary in the Los Angeles Times:
‘Lamarr never tried to promote her invention, considering it merely her contribution to the war effort.’
Spread-spectrum technology is still heavily in use by the military today and has had a major impact on the way we live our lives in a hyper-connected world. Thanks to Hedy Lamarr, we now enjoy Wi-Fi and GPS.
Neither Hedy nor George Antheil ever received a penny for the use of their invention.
It was only in the last decade of her life that the brains behind Hedy Lamarr’s beauty were revealed for the world to see. And even then, people had a hard time believing her intelligence was genuine. To quote Bombshell director Alexandra Dean:
‘I think it took a while for the world to catch up with Hedy Lamarr. I can say with confidence that she was 100 years ahead of her time.’
It’s nice to see this remarkable inventor finally getting the credit she deserves. I have a feeling she will prove an inspiration to many young girls from here on out.