#frequency hopping

let me tell you about hedy lamarr, because the world remembers her face and forgot everything else.

lamarr was born hedwig kiesler in vienna in 1914. by her early twenties she had moved to hollywood and become one of the biggest stars of the golden age of cinema. studios called her "the most beautiful woman in film," and that was the only identity anyone ever gave her. but behind the glamour, lamarr was an inventor with a restless, brilliant mind.

during world war ii, she learned that allied torpedoes were failing because the enemy could intercept and jam the radio signals used to guide them. rather than simply reading about the problem and moving on, she decided to solve it. she partnered with george antheil, a composer and pianist, and together they developed a concept called frequency-hopping spread spectrum. the idea was that a radio signal would rapidly jump between different frequencies, making it nearly impossible to jam. lamarr drew inspiration from an unexpected place — the synchronised rolls of a player piano. she and antheil patented the technology in 1942 and offered it to the united states navy free of charge.

the navy rejected it. lamarr was an actress, and the military did not take her seriously. they told her she would be more helpful selling war bonds, which she did, raising millions. her invention was filed away and forgotten.

but the idea was ahead of its time, not wrong. decades later, the military began quietly using frequency-hopping technology. it went on to become a foundational concept behind modern wifi, bluetooth, and gps — technologies that billions of people use every single day.

lamarr received no recognition for her contribution until 1997, when she was 83 years old. she was awarded the electronic frontier foundation pioneer award, and reportedly responded with "it's about time." she died three years later in 2000, and most of her obituaries still led with her beauty rather than her brilliance.

her story raises a question worth sitting with. how many ideas have been dismissed because the person behind them did not look like what the world expected an inventor to look like. how much have we lost because brilliance was mistaken for something less, simply because it came in an unexpected form.

¡Oi! Spoilers, stavfel och alternativa fakta kan förekomma rakt föröver!

Den här filmen inleds med ett citat av Hedy Lamarr: "Alla flickor kan se glamorösa ut, det är bara att stå stilla och se dum ut". Och på sätt och vis sammanfattar det bilden vi får av karaktären Hedy Lamarr, skådespelerskan och skönheten som aldrig fick en chans att vara annat än just glamorös. Ändå har vårt samhälle kommit att genomsyras av en av hennes uppfinningar: frekvenshoppning, en teknik som gör säker trådlös kommunikation möjlig. Det här är historien om Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler kvinnan som främst är ihågkommen som Hedy Lamarr -- världens vackraste skådespelerska.

Hela den här filmen ramas in av en (opublicerad) intervju med Hedy Lamarr som återupptäcktes av Robert Osborne, och det ger filmen en speciell nerv när Hedy mycket passande har en drivande central roll i filmen. Under tiden och mellan inläggen från intervjun får vi lära känna Hedy både framför och utanför kameran.  Liksom Greta Garbo blev hon smått anti-social med tiden (även om en rad misslyckade skönhetsoperationer anses vara en bidragande orsak i hennes fall), och likt Judy Garland fick hon metaamfetaminmissbruk som arbetsskada. Men hon var också en person som inte kunde låt bli att förbättra saker -- flygplansvingar och plastikkirurgi till exempel. Och man kittlas över stordåden hon kunnat uträtta om hon bara fått möjligheterna. Istället lider man lite med Hedy som reducerades av sin omvärld som en glamorös skådespelerska vars skönhet var hennes enda tillgång.