Passage II

Hedy Lamarr, Across the Spectrum

In 1940, Hedy Lamarr was becoming a Hollywood star, but she was bored. On set for only three months of the year, she filled her spare time with an unusual hobby: inventing. World War II was underway in Europe, where Lamarr had grown up, and she hoped to invent something to help the Allied cause. Because Lamarr’s former husband had often discussed his work in munitions, the actress knew about weaponry. She had ideas of her own, including an idea of hers for a torpedo with a sophisticated radio-controlled guidance system. (17) Lamarr knew that radio signals on one frequency is easy to jam by anyone sending a competing signal on the same frequency. She envisioned a system that used dozens of frequencies to transmit a signal to guide torpedoes. To protect the signal further, transmitters and receivers would jump from frequency to frequency in a predetermined order that would seem random to an outsider. Such a signal like that would be hard to detect and nearly impossible to disrupt.

[1] In August 1940, Lamarr met composer George Antheil, and the two began collaborating. [2] Antheil, who had synchronized player pianos for his compositions, had the mechanical knowledge that Lamarr needed to instigate her idea. [3] Then in 1942, the inventors heard that the Navy had rejected their idea. [4] They submitted the “Secret Communication System” to the military in June 1941. [5] In the decades after the war, however, the US military discovered the value of Lamarr’s idea, which came to be called “spread spectrum,” and used it in guidance, radio, and navigation systems. (23)

In 1978, spread spectrum was declassified, and it made a difference. Devices that operate wirelessly, cellular phones, wireless Internet networks, the Global Positioning System—functioning because of Lamarr’s idea. It wasn’t until 1996 that Lamarr and Antheil, they were finally given credit for spread spectrum. However, they were awarded the Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Upon hearing of her award, Lamarr said, “It’s about time.”