Hedy LamarrOn November 9, 1913, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born in Vienna, Austria, to a banker and his wife. Hedwig, who obviously became Hedy, had a rather calm childhood, but it was cinema that fascinated her. By the time she was a teenager she decided to drop out of school and seek fame as an actress. Her first role was a bit part in the German film Geld auf der Straße (1930) (aka "Money on the Street") in 1930. She was attractive and talented enough to be in three more German productions in 1931, but it would be her fifth film that catapulted her to worldwide fame. In 1932 she appeared in a German film called Ekstase (1933) (US title: "Ecstasy") and had made the gutsy move to be nude. It's the story of a young girl who is married to a gentleman much older than she, but she winds up falling in love with a young soldier. The film's nude scenes created a sensation all over the world. The scenes, very tame by today's standards, caused the film to be banned by the US government at the time. Hedy soon married Fritz Mandl, a munitions manufacturer and Nazi sympathizer. He attempted to buy up all the prints of "Ecstasy" he could lay his hands on (Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini, had a copy but refused to sell it to Mandl), but to no avail (there are prints floating around the world today). The notoriety of the film brought Hollywood to her door. She was brought to the attention of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, who signed her to a contract (a notorious prude when it came to his studio's films, Mayer signed her against his better judgment, but the money he knew her notoriety would bring in to the studio overrode any "moral" concerns he may have had). However, he insisted she change her name and make good, wholesome films. Hedy made her American film debut as Gaby in Algiers (1938). This was followed a year later by Lady of the Tropics (1939). In 1942 she landed the plum role of Tondelayo in the classic White Cargo (1942). After World War II her career began to decline and MGM decided it would be in the interest of all concerned if her contract were not renewed. Unfortunately for Hedy, she turned down the leads in both Gaslight (1940) and Casablanca (1942), both of which would have cemented her standing in the minds of the American public. In 1949 she appeared as Delilah opposite Victor Mature's Samson in Cecil B. DeMille's epic Samson and Delilah (1949). This proved to be Paramount Pictures' most profitable movie to date, bringing in $12 million in rental from theaters. The film's success led to more parts, but it was not enough to ease her financial crunch. She was to make only six more films between 1949 and 1957, the last being The Female Animal (1958). Hedy then retired to Florida, where she died on January 19, 2000.
Spread-Spectrum a technology that grew from a Hollywood dinner party conversation...
Hedy Lamarr's frequency-hopping idea - The invention of spread-spectrum radio... Wi-Fi and Bluetooth trace their roots back to Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr
The unlikely birthplace of modern mobile and wireless technology was a Hollywood dinner party in 1940, in a conversation between actress
Hedy Lamarr
—dubbed "the most beautiful girl in the world"—and film composerGeorge Antheil
The topic? How to build a radio-controlled torpedo that couldn't be jammed by the Nazis. 

Lamarr's first husband was a munitions maker, and she knew torpedoes. Her idea was to change frequencies rapidly to keep the radio signals to the torpedo from being jammed. Antheil's first major composition, Ballet Mechanique, used synchronized player pianos, and he suggested using paper rolls with holes punched in them to implement Lamarr's frequency-hopping idea.

In 1942, Lamarr and Antheil received a patent for the invention of spread-spectrum radio, which would eventually become the basis for wireless networking and many digital cellular telephone systems. But details of the invention were kept secret, even though the U.S. Navy decided not to use it. After all, there was a war going on. 

World War II spurred another key element of mobile communications when, in 1940, the company that would later become Motorola Inc. developed the first lightweight, handheld two-way radio for the U.S. Army. The Motorola "handie-talkie" weighed only 5 lb. and had a range of one to three miles.
But it was after the war that wireless personal communications began to take off. In 1946, AT&T Corp. launched the first commercial mobile telephone service for private customers in St. Louis. But limited capacity meant that 30 years later, only 44,000 U.S. Bell system customers had mobile phones - with another 20,000 on five- to 10-year waiting lists.
That would soon change. AT&T researchers had started work on the cellular concept in 1947. In 1973, Motorola project manager Martin Cooper used the first working prototype of a handheld cellular telephone to call his rivals at Bell Labs. In 1978, the telephone company in Bahrain began operating the world's first commercial cellular telephone system for use by individuals. In 1983, the first U.S. commercial cellular service was launched in Chicago, and by 1988 there were 1.5 million U.S. cell phone subscribers.


Meanwhile, solid-state electronics had replaced the piano-roll technology of the original spread-spectrum invention, and by the early 1960s it was being used to keep radio communications secure from prying ears. .



The same solid-state technology cut the cost of computing and made computer networks a necessity. And where wires couldn't go, a wireless network had to become a reality. In 1970, University of Hawaii professor Norman Abramson launched the first radio-based computer network, AlohaNet, which linked machines throughout the Hawaiian islands.
Digital technology also sparked handheld computing, which began with a flurry of heavy, battery-powered calculators in the early 1970s. In 1974, Hewlett-Packard Co. introduced its HP-65, the first programmable pocket calculator. In 1980, Sharp offered the first "pocket computer." A calculator that could be programmed in Basic, Sharp's PC-1211 gained popularity when RadioShack stores sold it as the RadioShack Pocket Computer. 

In the 1990s, it all began to converge. In 1991, digital cellular phone networks using spread-spectrum technology began operating in Europe and the U.S. In 1993, Nokia Corp. developed text messaging between mobile phones. That same year, Apple Computer Inc. introduced its Newton MessagePad, a handheld computer that boasted handwriting recognition, an idea that took off three years later with the PalmPilot 1000.


In 1999, Apple launched AirPort, the first wireless networking product based on Wi-Fi—which uses spread-spectrum technology. So does Bluetooth, the wireless system developed by Ericsson Mobile Communications AB researcher Jaap Haartsen, which began appearing in phones and handhelds in 2000.



And as the boundaries between palmtops, handheld phones and wireless networks vanish, the challenge now isn't solving a technical problem, but managing the technology that grew from that Hollywood dinner party conversation.
In Loving Memory of The Most Beautiful Woman of the 20th Century... Hedy Lamarr