LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Hedy Lamarr: Ideas
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Tells the story of how Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr came up with the idea for a secret communication system, which would much later become the basis for wireless technology. Written in graphic-novel format.
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Lamarr flourished in Hollywood. The raven-haired beauty starred in several films and became a fixture on the social scene. At a party at Janet Gaynor's house Lamarr met composer George Antheil. The two got to talking about the ensuing war and their own ideas about how to support the allied troops against Germany.
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[S]urely one of the most fascinating chapters in Lamarr's life and career had nothing to do with her film career and everything to do with her brain power. How many movie stars can you name, who hold the patent on a significant technological breakthrough? It's a story even Hollywood couldn't have invented. Hedy Lamarr shares the title to a 1942 patent, under her then legal name Hedy Kiesler Markey, for a “secret communication system” intended for use as a radio guidance device for US Navy torpedoes. Along with her co-inventor and avant-garde musician George Antheil (1900-1959), Lamarr came up with the idea of “frequency hopping” to quickly shift the radio signals of control devices, making them invulnerable to radio interference or jamming, a feat of technological prowess that was only formally acknowledged by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in March 1997 — somewhat belatedly for Mr. Antheil, who died in 1959. But for the 83-year-old Lamarr, then a Florida retiree, “It was about time.”
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Avant garde composer George Antheil, a son of German immigrants and neighbor of Lamarr, had experimented with automated control of instruments. Together, they submitted the idea of a Secret Communication System in June 1941. On 11 August 1942, U.S. Patent 2,292,387
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In 1940, Lamarr met the American avant-garde composer George Antheil of "ballet mécanique" fame. She described her idea to him, and asked him to help her construct a device that would enable this signal to be synchronized. Antheil laid out a system based on 88 frequencies, corresponding to the number of keys on a piano, using perforated paper rolls which would turn in sync with one another, transmitting and receiving ever-changing frequencies, preventing interceptance and jamming.
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Lamarr's frequency-hopping idea served as the basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology used in devices ranging from cordless telephones to WiFi Internet connections. The technology in particular that is often attributed to her and George Antheil is CDMA.[4]
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