Inventors
Hedy Lamarr
1914–2000 · Frequency-hopping co-inventor
Austria / United States
A film star who, with composer George Antheil, patented a way to hop radio frequencies so a torpedo’s control signal would be harder to jam. The navy did not adopt it then. Later spread-spectrum and Wi-Fi sit in the same family of ideas. Chronotech files her to refuse the myth that glamour and invention cannot share a life.
Why it mattered
- Treated the spectrum as something you can dance across.
- A reminder that inventors do not all come from labs with their name on the door.
