Research & Development World

  • R&D World Home
  • Topics
    • Aerospace
    • Automotive
    • Biotech
    • Careers
    • Chemistry
    • Environment
    • Energy
    • Life Science
    • Material Science
    • R&D Management
    • Physics
  • Technology
    • 3D Printing
    • A.I./Robotics
    • Software
    • Battery Technology
    • Controlled Environments
      • Cleanrooms
      • Graphene
      • Lasers
      • Regulations/Standards
      • Sensors
    • Imaging
    • Nanotechnology
    • Scientific Computing
      • Big Data
      • HPC/Supercomputing
      • Informatics
      • Security
    • Semiconductors
  • R&D Market Pulse
  • R&D 100
    • Call for Nominations: The 2025 R&D 100 Awards
    • R&D 100 Awards Event
    • R&D 100 Submissions
    • Winner Archive
    • Explore the 2024 R&D 100 award winners and finalists
  • Resources
    • Research Reports
    • Digital Issues
    • R&D Index
    • Subscribe
    • Video
    • Webinars
  • Global Funding Forecast
  • Top Labs
  • Advertise
  • SUBSCRIBE

More Than Just a Pretty Face

By R&D Editors | November 10, 2015

This week, Google honored actress Hedy Lamaar, once promoted by the co-founder of MGM as “the world’s most beautiful woman,” with a Google Doodle on what would have been her 101st birthday. 

 

I knew Hedy Lamarr was an actress. I knew she was a Blazing Saddles punchline. But I had no idea that she was also an inventor.

The Austrian-born beauty appeared in numerous roles, but she grew bored with the glamorous Hollywood scene of the 1940s. A biographer states that she much preferred a quiet intellectual discussion at home with intelligent friends over drinking and star-studded parties.

US Patent 2292387 A​Lamarr longed to help the war effort — she soon thought up an idea to protect passenger cruise liners from German torpedoes. She received a patent in 1942 for a “Secret communication system,” which utilized frequency hopping to gain control over the normally free-running torpedoes. The patent was patriotically donated to the U.S. Navy … which promptly shoved it into storage and told Lamarr that she was better off selling kisses in exchange for war bonds. She raised $7 million in one night. She also never received a penny for her patent. 

However, her patent (by that time, expired) was revisited in the 1950s. Engineers borrowed its ideas for the spread-spectrum technology eventually used during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Today, the basis of her technology is used in Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi, and most digital devices that communicate wirelessly.

Lamarr’s other inventions included an improved stoplight, and an unsuccessful dissolvable soda tablet that tasted more like Alka-Seltzer than Coca-Cola. Image: Wikipedia

She — along with the technology’s co-creator, composer George Antheil — was honored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation with their Pioneer Award in 1997 for her “significant and influential contributions to the development of computer-based communications.” Her reported response: “It’s about time.”

Germany, Switzerland, and her home country of Austria have designated Lamarr’s birthday, Nov. 9, as Inventors’ Day. The day encourages people to develop their own ideas for changing the world for the better, and also serves to remind people of forgotten inventors. Or, maybe, the ones people never knew about in the first place. 

Related Articles Read More >

2025 R&D layoffs tracker tops 92,000
Eli Lilly facility
9 R&D developments this week: Lilly builds major R&D center, Stratolaunch tests hypersonic craft, IBM chief urges AI R&D funding
Five cases where shaky science snowballed into public confusion
Caltech, Fermilab, and collaborators test quantum sensors for future particle physics experiments
rd newsletter
EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND STAY CONNECTED
Get the latest info on technologies, trends, and strategies in Research & Development.
RD 25 Power Index

R&D World Digital Issues

Fall 2024 issue

Browse the most current issue of R&D World and back issues in an easy to use high quality format. Clip, share and download with the leading R&D magazine today.

Research & Development World
  • Subscribe to R&D World Magazine
  • Enews Sign Up
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing
  • Global Funding Forecast

Copyright © 2025 WTWH Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media
Privacy Policy | Advertising | About Us

Search R&D World

  • R&D World Home
  • Topics
    • Aerospace
    • Automotive
    • Biotech
    • Careers
    • Chemistry
    • Environment
    • Energy
    • Life Science
    • Material Science
    • R&D Management
    • Physics
  • Technology
    • 3D Printing
    • A.I./Robotics
    • Software
    • Battery Technology
    • Controlled Environments
      • Cleanrooms
      • Graphene
      • Lasers
      • Regulations/Standards
      • Sensors
    • Imaging
    • Nanotechnology
    • Scientific Computing
      • Big Data
      • HPC/Supercomputing
      • Informatics
      • Security
    • Semiconductors
  • R&D Market Pulse
  • R&D 100
    • Call for Nominations: The 2025 R&D 100 Awards
    • R&D 100 Awards Event
    • R&D 100 Submissions
    • Winner Archive
    • Explore the 2024 R&D 100 award winners and finalists
  • Resources
    • Research Reports
    • Digital Issues
    • R&D Index
    • Subscribe
    • Video
    • Webinars
  • Global Funding Forecast
  • Top Labs
  • Advertise
  • SUBSCRIBE