The article examines the contribution of outstanding women to the development of information technologies, such as Karen Spark Jones, Radia Perlman, and others
7 
We talk about the outstanding life of Hedy Lamarr, a Hollywood actress and inventor. From an exciting acting career to creating the technology behind modern Wi-Fi, Lamarr is an example of how talent and an inquisitive mind can change the world. Learn more about her contributions to technology and the dramatic twists in her life.
What do four-handed piano playing, torpedoes, and Wi-Fi on your gadget have in common? You will find the answer in this article. November 9, 2014 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr. Films with her participation have long since become Hollywood classics. But not everyone knows that she is more than just an actress. Without it, we still hardly talked on the phones, used GPS for navigation and looked for places where Wi-Fi could be better intercepted. But about everything in order.
Hedwig Eva Maria Keisler was born in Vienna in 1914 and was the only child in the family of Gertrude and Emil Keiler. Emil Keisler’s father was from Lviv and ran a bank. His mother, Gertrude Lichtwitz, came from a wealthy Jewish family in Budapest and was a pianist.
At the age of 16, Hedwig left home and enrolled in a theater school, where he began acting in films. She made her debut in the German film Girl in a Nightclub (1930).
In the late 1920s, Max Reinhard invited her to Berlin as an actress.
The Czechoslovakian-Austrian film by Gustav Makhata “Ecstasy” (Eva, 1933) brought her world fame. The ten-minute scene of naked bathing in a forest lake is quite innocent by the standards of the 21st century, but in 1933 it caused a storm of emotions.
The picture was banned for showing in a number of countries and was released a few years later with censorship notes.
As a child, Hedy went to a theater school, was engaged in ballet, played the piano and loved to study mathematics.
After the scandalous shootout, the parents decided to put an end to their daughter’s bohemian life and married 19-year-old Hedwig to 33-year-old Austrian billionaire and manufacturer Fritz Mandl, the owner of an arms factory.
Mandl made a fortune by selling Germany and Hungary new weapons systems in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler and Mussolini visited the manufacturer’s receptions. Young Frau Mandl condemned her husband’s political views
Hedi immediately understood that for her husband she is another profitable acquisition, like a car or a thoroughbred horse. Mandl bragged about his beautiful wife to business partners and high society.
She went with her husband to his factory and also attended production meetings. Despite the manufacturer’s wife, the partners calmly discussed their affairs. How can any actress understand what such a serious gentleman is talking about? On the other hand, the actress listened to all the meetings and delved into technical problems due to the lack of other intellectual pastime. Her knowledge in mathematics and curiosity allowed her to fully understand the essence of the conversation.
“Since childhood, I was interested in everything that surrounded me,” she said. At the time, the Mandl Institute was working on the creation of guided weapons.
Controlling torpedoes by wire proved inappropriate in a water environment, and they looked for the possibility of using radio for this. However, experts were unable to overcome the technical shortcomings of classical radio broadcasting.
In the summer of 1937, after 4 years of unsuccessful marriage, Hedwig Mandel makes a classic escape from the castle, allowing the maid to take medicine.
Hedwig, well aware of the scale of the looming fascist threat, did not dare to stay in Europe and left for New York on the ship “Normandy”. And on the ship she signed a lucrative contract with Louis Mayer. The memory of the scandalous “ecstasy” is still fresh, and the name of Hedwig Kiesler can cause rejection in the puritans of the United States.
On Mayer’s advice, she took the pseudonym Hedy Lamar (in honor of Mayer’s former lover, actress Barbara Lamar). In Hollywood, the career of the actress developed rapidly. She starred in such famous films as “Algeria”, “Women in the Tropics”, “Tortilla Flat”, “Dangerous Experiment”, “Samson and Delilah”.
In total, Lamarr won 3,000 million dollars from filming – the amount at that time.
Louis Mayer called Hedy Lamarr the most beautiful woman in the world and believed that it was time to break the monopoly of stereotypical platinum blondes on the screen.
When the Second World War began, the actress turned to the National Council of Inventors of the United States, created as part of measures to strengthen defense capabilities, and offered her services.
But first she advised using “Glorious Beauty” to sell defense loan bonds. During this promotion, anyone who bought £25,000 worth of bonds received a kiss from Hedy Lamarr. She raised as much as 7,700 million because she wanted to attract so many people.
But the actress knew she could do much more than just sell bonds. At that time, military and civilian ships were killed in the Atlantic from the attacks of German submarines.
Lamarr recalled how her ex-husband discussed with his partners the problem of remote control of torpedoes and the impossibility of using radio communication for this. If the coordinates of the target of the guided torpedo are transmitted on the same frequency, enemy ships can easily intercept, jam the signal, or even completely redirect the torpedo to another target.
Gradually, Hedy came to a simple conclusion: you need to constantly change the frequency randomly over a wide range, synchronizing the transmitter and receiver
Hedy Lamarr urges: “Be honest with our comrades – buy us war bonds.”
The idea came to her immediately after meeting the avant-garde composer George Antheil (1900-1959). He composed music for several operas, orchestras and films. Some of his most famous works were a mechanical ballet for a symphony orchestra, 12 mechanical pianos, electric bells and propellers for airplanes.
In addition to music, Antheil wrote several books, worked as a columnist for magazines and as a reporter during the war. In one of the articles, he very accurately predicted the development and consequences of the Second World War.
George Antheil was so inclined to music from childhood that his mother sent him to a village where no one had a piano. However, even there he found a way out by ordering an instrument through a music store.
Hedy Lamarr met George Ansell at a party in 1940. At first they discussed his article in Esquire magazine, but the conversation smoothly turned to a topic that suited them both: how to help the country in the fight against fascists.
Lamarr and Antheil loved to play the piano with 4 hands. The game told them that it was possible to send part of the radio signal to the torpedo on one frequency and then switch to another frequency to transmit the next part of the signal. If the transmitter and receiver agree on frequency hopping in advance, the signal can become resistant to interference suppression — it’s like a game of 4 hands.
Mechanical alignment of the transmitter and receiver can be done using parts similar to the rollers of a mechanical piano. A compact roller with pins, a perforated tape and a chronometer drive easily fits into the hull of a marine torpedo. The roller began to rotate and set the course indicated on the punched tape.
A short radio signal transmitted its rotation to the torpedo roller, and on it the same perforation was automatically filled, and the torpedo was fired on its course.
Cartoon ad: “Trenton and Paris Prophet of Mechanisms and Music Presents His ‘Mechanical Ballet’ and Other Discoveries at Carnegie Hall Tomorrow Night”
Pseudorandom codes were used to encrypt information before, but they were transmitted over open communication channels. Now, to change transmission channels, a secret key, the same for reception and transmission, was needed. An adversary would not be able to scan and jam all 88 frequencies, and the calculation would take too much time and effort.
The idea was called “pseudo-random adjustment of the operating frequency” (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum). A check on the mechanical pianos that participated in the performance of the “Mechanical Ballet” confirmed the system’s functionality.
For several more months, Hedy and George refined their invention. In December 1940, the application was sent to the chairman of the National Council of Inventors, Charles Kettering (head of the research department of General Motors), selected from among hundreds of thousands of others and refined under his direction.
In June 1941, US patent No. 2,292,387 was received for the Secret Communication System. The patent described secret communication systems involving the transmission of false channels at different frequencies. Lamarr and Antheil donated it to the government and waived all payments.
Patent #2,292,387 issued to Hedy Kiesler Marquette (in the name of her second husband) and George Antheil
The US Navy tried to implement the inventor’s idea, but mechanical control using punched tape turned out to be difficult. The patents were classified for many years.
The concept of frequency hopping was revived only with the development of electronic devices after the war. In 1957, Sylvanian engineers experimented with the idea of a “secret message system” and began using semiconductor components instead of mechanical ones.
The term “broadband signal” appeared, and Lamar and Ansail’s idea was so fruitful that already in 1962 the American military used new radio equipment during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
A note in the New York Times about the invention: “Its discovery is so important to national defense that officials will not allow its details to be published”
In the mid-1980s, the Pentagon declassified a number of patents, and the SPS became available for civilian use. The invention formed the basis of technologies with an extended spectrum of frequencies, which is used everywhere today: in cellular communication, wireless data transmission protocols of the Wi-Fi standard, Bluetooth, in GPS receivers and satellites.
In 1953, Hedy Lamarr received American citizenship. She was married six times and had three children. After 1958, she stopped acting, and a last failed marriage led to her losing all her possessions.
In 1966, the actress tried to return to the screen, but this was prevented by her unpleasant character and habit of openly expressing her opinion.
The loss of the movie diva’s reputation was also caused by accusations of stealing things from a store (the court later refuted them) and the release of the allegedly autobiographical book “Ecstasy and I”, which contained a lot of conjecture and gossip.
Wireless computer enthusiasts who dug up Hedy Lamarr’s story tried to present her at the IEEE Awards, but their efforts were unsuccessful. Only in 1997, the actress received the Electronic Frontier Foundation award, but refused to be present at the award ceremony and did not want to receive journalists. Instead, his son Anthony Lauder received the award.
1966 year. Hedy Lamarr at a press conference the day after he was arrested for shoplifting.
In 1998, Hedy Lamarr’s name appeared in the media again: the actress sued Corel for using her portrait on the packaging of the CorelDRAW8 software package. In the lawsuit, she demanded payment of 15 million pounds, half of which was paid as 10% of sales of CorelDRAW8, and the other half – as compensation for non-pecuniary damage.
But this image was not a photo card, but a digital illustration created for the Corel design Contest in 1996. This artwork won the grand prize, and the company began using it to promote CorelDRAW.
And although Heady demanded to remove her image from all Corel products, according to the court decision, the company was allowed to use Lamarr’s identity for 5 years and ordered to pay the actress $225 million.
Artist John Corkery painted this digital illustration for 120 hours at the age of 86 in a nursing home.
She was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the advancement of cinema. In 2014, Lamarr and Antheil were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
And the actress’s birthday, November 9, is Inventor’s Day in Germany, Austria and other European countries.
7 
115 
142