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How Hollywood's Hedy Helped Heighten Handhelds (hackaday.com)
szczys writes: Hedy Lamarr is a household name for the wrong reason. Her name is known as a Hollywood actress, but her legacy is in your pocket and reaches far more people than her movies. She was a brilliant thinker who plied her skills during World War II, developing technology that could help to win the war. Her patent wasn't used at the time, but is a foundation of spread-spectrum which is used in the radio modules of your cellphone: WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and others. This frequency hopping concept sat unused for decades before being added to the most ubiquitous of wireless connectivity methods.
No, it's Hedley!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So if it hadn't been tied up in patent limbo, we could have had all those advancements decades earlier?
Man patents suck.
Asinine Alliteration Accentuates Author's Atrociously Antiquated Awareness About Awesome And Able Actress
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
But how can we encourage more women and minorities to join STEM fields? We're discouraging future Hedy Lamarrs with the toxic 'bro culture' that pervades programming.
Always seemed strange to me to give someone credit for inventing something that was invented around 40 years before they "invented' it.
https://www.google.com/doodles...
This frequency hopping concept sat unused for decades before being added to the most ubiquitous of wireless connectivity methods.
Frequency hopping has been used by the military long before cell phones were invented.
Hedy Lamarr helped win the Cold War.
Heavy "H" Heaping Hinders Helpful Headlines. Have Heart!
Table-ized A.I.
The invention was quite interesting, too -- a mechanical implementation of spread spectrum that was based on player piano technology.
While you may think, like some journalists, that this is the best trick in the business, it's rather stupid and distracting and shows a lack of professionalism.
Hedy Lamar was a babe. Win, win. On the other hand, I am married to a smart babe and at times it can be a bit of a challenge. I do not want to get into the details but let your imagination run wild.
It's a great story, but her invention was never used. It's really a huge stretch it really relates at all to current spread-spectrum technology. Even if you think it is related, spread-spectrum as developed did not base their ideas on her invention, and it's unlikely they were even aware of it.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Lamarr invented "frequency hopping" while CDMA cellular and GPS use "direct sequence". Frequency hopping is just what it sounds like: a narrowband transmitter is continually retuned to a different radio channel. Unless the receiver tuning follows the same sequence at the proper times it cannot receive the transmission.
Direct sequence XORs a narrowband signal with a high speed pseudorandom "chip" sequence, and the receiver undoes this operation by XORing it again by the same sequence properly synchronized in time. It closely resembles a keystream-type encryption system, though the "keystream" is not necessarily secret. The main difference is that direct sequence is a wideband signal while, at any instant, a frequency hopped signal is still narrowband.
Each method has advantages. Frequency hopping can be especially resistant to strong narrowband jamming, so it's a favorite of military systems (Lamarr's intended use). Direct sequence is easier to use with coherent modulation so it tends to use transmitter power more efficiently, and it can often provide precise timing and positioning as a side benefit. Or, in the case of GPS, as its primary purpose.
While CDMA mobile phones were very important in the 1990s and 2000s, it is now being replaced with LTE (Long Term Evolution), which uses OFDM - Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing. So do many other modern terrestrial digital communication systems including DSL, HD Radio, DVB-T (but not ATSC), WiFi and DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale).
This is an old, well-established fact.
In other technology news, the Soviets launched a satellite, Sputnik, into space. No idea yet if the USA can match that advanced technology, but the Space Race is on!
The true history can be found here: http://destroyhistory.com/ .
Here is a photo of Hedy Lamarr. Naked.
https://jnpickens.files.wordpr...
Here is a photo of Phil Zimmerman. Fully clothed.
http://cdn.androidbeat.com/wp-...
Now who wants to argue that there shouldn't be more women in tech?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Alliterations are so fucking stupid!
Who is Hedy?
I cannot believe that this crap is actually believed! It is wrong in so many ways. It's also insulting to the women who actually worked hard to create real advances in science like say Radia Perlman, who aren't attractive celebrities!
1. Frequency hopping was first mentioned by Tesla 30 years before. It was used in WW1 by the Germans, there were patents on frequency hopping in the 30's. It was used by both the USA and Germany in WW2.
2. The invention was by George Antheill who had created a musical piece by synchronizing player pianos. At the time when asked she said
“Hedy modestly admitted she did only ‘creative work on the invention,’ while the composer and author, George Antheil, ‘did the really important chemical part.‘
Hedy was not too clear about how the device worked, but she remembered that she and Anthiel sat down on her living room rug and were using a silver match box with the matches simulating the wiring of the invented ‘thing.’ She said it was lots more fun being scientific than going to the movies.”
- See more at: http://patentlawcenter.pli.edu/2011/12/05/the-truth-about-hedy-lamarr/#sthash.LV86Y6iE.dpuf
She got dual credit on the patent, but apparently everyone forgets about George.
3. As others point out frequency hopping is NOT the basis on model cell phones.
A couple of issues, why did the USA keep her patent secret you ask? Because they were using spread spectrum and they didn't want that to get out.
She did think of it right? Well probably not since her ex-husband was an arms dealer in Austria so she probably heard him talking about it.
Really folks, what's the chance of someone who had no noteworthy science background, who introduced herself to Antheil because she wanted a boob job and never did anything again, whose "invention" looks like the work of someone else (Antheil).
Please STOP repeating this crap and tell people the truth.
Perhaps the earliest mention of frequency hopping in the open literature is in radio pioneer Jonathan Zenneck's book Wireless Telegraphy (German, 1908, English translation McGraw Hill, 1915), although Zenneck himself states that Telefunken had already tried it.
The German military made limited use of frequency hopping [] in World War I []
A Polish engineer, Leonard Danilewicz, came up with the idea in 1929 []
During World War II, the US Army Signal Corps was inventing a communication system called SIGSALY, which incorporated spread spectrum in a single frequency context. However, SIGSALY was a top-secret communications system, so its existence did not become known until the 1980s.
The most celebrated invention of frequency hopping, though it came decades after others had come up with the concept and technologies making use of it were in existence, was a patent awarded to actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil,--Wikipedia
So she didn't invent it (if invent = first invent) and it didn't sit unused for decades before nor after her. Still, cool story. She's definitely the glammest of all inventors of frequency hopping.
At least, it looks like that
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
"Hedy Lamarr is a household name for the wrong reason."
That's moronic. No one knew about frequency hopping unless you were a radio geek and even today it's unknown in most households. Hedy Lamarr was a household name because she was a popular actress and labeled the most beautiful woman in Europe with several personal life dramas that made news headlines. Those things make someone a household name.
She tried to use spread spectrum (actually 88 piano keys) to keep torpedoes from being destroyed. It was later adapted by someone (some unknown non-actress guy) for use with conventional radio transmissions. Other (unknown non-actress guys) developed it into the system you use for cell phones. Oh but Hedy! Ignore all those non-actress guys who actually developed it into something practical and useful! Hedy!
Now we'll see two or three times the volume of this tidbit on Reddit /r/todayILearned.