(By Kenneth Wyatt) A recent article by Intel describes how actress, Hedy Lamarr helped invent the first frequency-hopping anti-jamming system for torpedoes.
The article describes, “A lonely immigrant from Austria slips out of her stage clothes and kicks off her heels. Carefully removing her movie makeup, she’s dissatisfied that she’s been overlooked for more significant roles. Instead of throwing a pity party over a glass of Pinot Noir, however, she heads determinedly for her drafting table, a place where she’s previously invented an improved traffic stoplight.”
Her dual life as an actress and engineer was part of what makes Lamarr such a captivating character. Excerpting from my article, published in Interference Technology, March 2013, “During WW2, the U.S. Navy was having problems with radio-controlled torpedoes that were being jammed by high-strength RF signals tuned to the same frequency as the transmitting radio. In August 11, 1942, Austrian actress, Hedy (Lamarr) Keisler Markey and pianist and composer, George Antheil, with the help of an electrical engineering professor at the California Institute of Technology, solved this problem and were granted U.S. Patent Number 2,292,387 for a “Secret Communication System”.”
The device used a mechanism to rapidly switch between several frequencies on the transmitter (what is now called frequency hopping).
For the Interference Technology article, click here.
For more, click here.
