Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr co-invented a radio technique that underlies Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
In 1942, Lamarr and composer George Antheil patented a frequency-hopping system to stop enemy ships jamming radio-guided torpedoes. The US Navy ignored it for decades.
Why is this true?
Frequency hopping, switching rapidly between channels so signals are hard to jam or intercept, became a foundation of spread-spectrum communication. Lamarr received recognition for it only shortly before her death in 2000.
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Famous people accumulate stories, and only some of them are true. The entries in this category stick to documented episodes: the patents, the letters, the odd habits recorded by people who were actually there. Where a story is commonly retold in an exaggerated form, the explanation says so, which makes these facts safer to repeat than the version that usually circulates online.