Hack to the Past: Hedy Lamarr
By Anita Raj, Columbia SEAS ‘27
Article Idea Credits to Sarah Shen, Columbia College ‘24
A series on influential women and POC in STEM.
Early Life
Born as Hedwig Eva Kiesler on November 9, 1914, Lamarr was part of a middle class Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. Being the only child, Lamarr was the main attention of her father, a bank director. The two would go on many nature walks together during which he would explain how many machines worked, like the printing press. Lamarr’s mother, being a concert pianist, introduced her to the arts, like piano and ballet, and even inspired Lamarr to reassemble her music box.
At age sixteen, Lamarr was discovered by Austrian film director Max Reinherdt and gained international appeal for her role in the Czech film Ecstasy. After leaving an unhappy marriage with Austrian munitions seller and Nazi supporter, Fritz Mandl, she fled to the United States and gained a contract at Hollywood. Her first American movie, Algiers, was a box office sensation.
Career
At a dinner party, Lamarr met George Antheil, a film writer. The two were uncomfortable profiting from Hollywood while a World War took place on an international stage. Together, they created a system of frequency hopping so radio waves could not be intercepted, in which the transmitter and receiver hop to new frequencies in unison. Despite the “Secret Communications System” winning a patent, the Navy refused to implement Lamarr’s system, so Lamarr went on to sell war bonds instead to support the country. However, this technology, initially created to prevent the German Nazis from decoding messages, would be used in the security of both military and cellular communication.
Lamarr was eventually acknowledged with the Pioneer Award in 1997 from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and was the first women to receive the Invention Convention’s Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award.
Legacy
Lamarr created the foundations for what would one day become Wifi, GPS, and Bluetooth connections. From being both an actress and named the “mother of Wifi” to having her technology used in ship-torpedo communications without risk of detection, Lamarr’s frequency hopping system is implemented in many systems to the present day.
In Hedy Lamarr’s words, “The world isn’t getting any easier. With all these new inventions I believe that people are hurried more and pushed more . . . The hurried way is not the right way; you need time for everything — time to work, time to play, time to rest.”
