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“My face is a mask I cannot remove: I must always live with it. I curse it” – Hedy Lamarr
Hollywood actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr was born as Hedwig Kiesler in 1914 to a prosperous Jewish banker. Lamarr grew up comfortably in Vienna, where she was privately tutored and by the age of ten, Hedy was a proficient dancer, pianist, and could speak four languages. At 16, Lamarr enrolled in a Berlin acting school, and within the first year had achieved European stardom in the scandalous Czech film “Ecstasy” where she was the first actress to feign an orgasm on screen. The film, denounced by Pope Pius XI, led to Lamarr’s infamous labelling as ‘The Ecstasy Girl,’. But while Hedy was widely praised for her beautiful face and Hollywood career, it wasn’t until years after her screen career ended that she achieved recognition for her groundbreaking invention of a radio communications device.
After her initial film success, Hedy married fascist armaments manufacturer Fritz Mandl. When speaking about her marriage, Hedy said, “I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded — and imprisoned — having no mind, no life of its own.” Hedy despised the controlling nature of her husband and wished to find independence through a career abroad.
The next 20 years Hedy spent in the US where she was declared the “most beautiful woman in the world,” and left her mark on Hollywood as glamorous, sensual characters in films like Algiers (1938), Boom Town (1940) and White Cargo (1942). But Lamarr was consistently critical about the industry which led her to international fame. Hedy once stated “Any girl can be glamorous. All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.” Lamarr’s true passion lay in the sciences.
Lamarr credits her father for her natural curiosity. Her father taught her engineering, and explained the mechanics of the machinery they encountered. As young as age 5, Hedy would spend time taking apart and rebuilding her music box to understand how it worked. Hedy’s knack for tinkering and understanding of world failings inspired her to seek solutions to the issues she encountered. In her trailer between takes, and at night while other Hollywood stars were at parties, Hedy practiced her favourite hobby: discovering and inventing. Lamarr tinkered with designs for traffic lights and soluble fizzy-drink tablets.
When the U.S entered WWII, Hedy sought to find a way to help in the fight against the Nazis. When she expressed her wish to invent, Lamarr was discouraged, and advised to instead contribute to the war effort as a pinup: entertaining troops, pushing war bonds and, as the documentary notes, selling kisses. Instead, Lamarr quietly began to work with her friend and composer George Antheil on frequency-hopping spread-spectrum technology to unpredictably interchange the transmission of carrier waves. The device used to remotely control torpedoes without the risk of interception and jamming by enemy forces was awarded a patent in August 1942, ,but the US Navy dismissed the Communication System as being too complicated to implement.
In the early 1960s during the Cuban Missile Crisis, however, Hedy’s invention was resurrected, and has since been heavily used by the military. Spread-spectrum technology has since become the backbone of the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS systems that rely on today, but the time the technology was implemented, Hedy and George’s patent had expired, and they never received a single payment for the invention.
Hedy Lamarr is a clear example of the way in which society places value on women’s appearance rather than their mind. Rather than acknowledging Hedy for the scientific trailblazer that she was, the media continuously chose to focus on Hedy’s love life, scandals, and of course, her appearance. It has taken decades for the narrative around Lamarr to shift and for her brilliant mind and scientific intellect to be acknowledged.
Sources :
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/mar/08/hedy-lamarr-1940s-bombshell-helped-invent-wifi-missile
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hedy-Lamarr
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151219-hedy-lamarr-racy-actor-and-technology-pioneer
https://nationswell.com/hedy-lamarr-bombshell-inventor-wifi/