Hedy Lamarr, The Film Star Who Invented A Torpedo Steering System

Hedy Lamarr, The Film Star Who Invented A Torpedo Steering System

Updated on September 18, 2011
Hedy Lamarr, Inventor
Hedy Lamarr's title is known to hundreds of thousands of movie followers as one of the nice beauties of Hollywood's Golden Age. She appeared in over 25 movies from 1933 to 1957, and starred with some legendary names akin to Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable. She starred in such hit movies as 'White Cargo' and 'Tortilla Flat' in 1942 and she or he was Delilah to Victor Mature's Samson in 'Samson and Delilah' in 1949.
What shouldn't be so well-known is that in 1942, at the very time she was being feted as one of the most lovely and successful stars in Hollywood, Hedy was able to co-invent and patent a torpedo steerage system that was twenty years ahead of its its time and whose basic principles lie behind anti-jamming units used in in the present day's communication satellites.
Hedwig
Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna in November, 1914 into a conventional middle class family. As a young girl Hedwig determined she wished to be an actress and when she left college she was accepted into Max Reinhardt's performing college in Berlin. In 1933 in her fifth movie 'Extase' closeups of her face in supposed orgasm, and lengthy pictures of her within the nude, gave the film and Hedwig international notoriety.
Younger Hedwig
Hedwig's profession as an inventor started with her first husband whom she married in 1933. He was Friedrich Mandl, aged 32, a rich businessman and the chairman of a company which manufactured armaments including aircraft steerage methods. Throughout the course of their 4 year marriage Hedwig Mandl turned one in all Vienna's foremost society hostesses, giving elaborate dinner events for the cream of Europe's society including international politicians comparable to Hitler and Mussolini.
Hedwig clearly learned so much from the dinner table conversations, which frequently were about her husband's growing curiosity in control programs for navy aircraft. When her marriage to Mandl ended amid a lot unpleasantness in 1937 (he was a possessive and jealous man who didn't like her having an appearing profession) Hedwig fled to America, modified her title to Hedy Lamarr, and have become an immensely profitable and glamorous film actress. However she by no means forgot the knowledge garnered around the dinner tables of Viennese society. It came in very helpful when she met certainly one of her neighbours in Hollywood, movie composer and magazine writer, George Antheil.
More Wonderful however True Tales
George Antheil
George Antheil
George Antheil was an American, born in New Jersey in 1900 whose mother and father came originally from Prussia. He studied music in Philadelphia then travelled to Berlin and Paris as a concert pianist and avante-garde composer.
Whilst in Paris in 1924, he composed a 'Ballet Mécanique', scored for sixteen 'player' pianos (in different words, not played by human pianists) and which required the synchronisation of the output of every piano to each other and likewise to a back-projected film. (The piece additionally needed four bass drums, seven electrical bells, a siren, three xylophones, a tam-tam,and three totally different-sized airplane propellors in addition to two standard human-played grand pianos.) It was by no means properly performed on the time simply because the technology for linking and synchronizing multiple player pianos, though theoretically doable by using a hole punched piano roll, turned out to not be practical.
Hedy attending to know Clark Gable
The Hollywood Inventors
Antheil's fame as a glandular specialist was such that Hedy Lamarr approached him in the summertime of 1940 with an enquiry about whether or not she may have her breasts enlarged. When their dialog switched to music and to weapons they realised they might combine their knowledge to supply an innovative machine.
What Lamarr and Antheil did was combine his knowledge of piano roll synchronisation with her data of torpedo steerage methods to create one of the earliest recognized forms of the telecommunications technique known as "frequency hopping", which used slotted paper rolls just like player-piano rolls to co-ordinate adjustments in transmitter and receiver frequencies. It used eighty-eight frequencies, the identical as the variety of keys on a piano, and was supposed to make radio-guided torpedoes harder, if not unattainable, for enemies to detect or to jam.
After months spent working on their system Lamarr and Antheil despatched an outline of it to the National Inventors Council in December, 1940. The Council received many thousands of ideas of which only a few passed detailed inspection however Antheil and Lamarr have been inspired to develop their concept further. This they did and had been capable of patent it on August eleven, 1942, underneath the identify 'Secret Communications System'.
The 1942 Patent. The name H Okay Markey was Hedy's married identify together with her second husband.
The concept was years forward of its time, and because of the state of mechanical technology in 1942 it was not a sensible chance and the patent expired before the inventors might revenue from the new know-how they had helped to create.
It was implemented in the USA in 1962, when it was utilized by the U.S. navy during the blockade of Cuba however this was after the patent had expired. The strategy of frequency hopping is now extensively utilized in fashionable technology including mobile telephones.
Come Reside with Me, 1941 Source
Hedy Lamarr's Hollywood profession light through the 1950s and she or he retired from film-making in 1958 at the age of forty-4. She married six times in all. She died in Florida in January 2000, aged eighty five. The first Inventor's Day in Germany was held on 9 November 2005, to honor her work on what would have been her 92nd birthday.
In 2003, a collection of commercials were run to draw recruits to the Boeing Company. They prominentlly featured the beautiful Hedy Lamarr however solely as a woman of science. No reference to her film profession was made.
Hedy Lamarr, Inventor 1914-2000
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6 feedback
Very attention-grabbing and informative. Thanks for the analysis.
gunsock 7 years in the past from South Coast of England
Author
William F. Torpey 6 years in the past from South Valley Stream, N.Y.
I wasn't aware of Hedy Lamarr's technical expertise, gunsock. I guess I was taking a look at something else. She was a very well known actress in my youth. I recognize your very thorough biographical sketch.
discovery2020 four years ago from TEXAS
Hey, Gunsock. Being a trivia freak and film star freak, I already knew of this and sat down this morning to do a hub on Hedy. After placing together all my notes and beginning to collect the images I needed I had a sudden feeling that I ought to see if it had been accomplished already. Well, my buddy you probably did your self proud with this article. Well carried out...wish I had been a Hubber sooner! Now, on to my next thought. Good luck.
gunsock 4 years ago from South Coast of England
Writer
I know how you are feeling discovery2020 - its occurred to me too! You've got been very variety together with your comments considering your wasted time. Many thanks and good luck together with your next idea!
J 4 years ago
"Darkish matters" present brought me right here LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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