Hedy Lamarr was from Austria and was raised by her Jewish parents. Around the 1940s the Nazis were beginning to approach Austria so she decided to flee to Hollywood, California. She began her career in film, but she was mot interested in engineering and technology. She was also known for her many inventions but her most popular one was “frequency hopping.” Which was a transmitter and the receiver being able to simultaneously jump from one frequency to another without allowing anyone else to jam the signal. Her invention was brought to the Navy to help combat the Nazis in World War II, but was pushed away and was told to raise money for the war by putting her face on things instead of making inventions.
For years she never got credit for what she invited even though she had a patent for it. After the patent expired it become more well know. Frequency hopping is still used today with wireless phones, WIFI, fax machines, GPS, and military communication systems. After 50 years she finally got acknowledged by receiving the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award but she will always be remembered by her beauty and not her inventions, which is sad. She died at the of 86 in January 2000.
The most useful research sources were Huffington Post’s Women in Tech, and the Gale Virtual Reference Library.
