Sunday, March 1, 2020

Actress Hedy Lamarr was Awarded a Key Patent in 1942 Paving Way for Wi-Fi



Actress Hedy Lamarr was familiar with both radio technology and the weapons industry. She had the idea of using multiple, changing frequencies to make signal sabotage harder, and referred to it as frequency hopping. We now call this spread spectrum .

Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000)
Hedy Lamarr
Composer Antheil had extensive experience with the synchronization of player pianos, or pianolas. The two took inspiration from this to develop a secret communication system for the remote control of torpedoes, based on a frequency hopping mechanism that switched between 88 different frequencies. In 1942, they received a patent for this system. 

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