In the 30s-40s of the last century, she was known as the most beautiful woman in the world. Her beautiful face was an ideal stimulus to create the image of Princess Snow White, a famous role that shone in the world of American animated films. More than anything else, she was a shining star in the golden age of Hollywood cinema, and she is the reason for this article because of her pioneering contribution to the field of technology to be called “Mother of Wi-Fi”.
Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, popularly known as Hedy Lamarr, was born on November 9, 1914 in Vienna, Austria as the only child of a Jewish family.
Her interest in the world of technology and innovation was inspired by her father, a curious bank director. He discussed the inner workings of various machines like the printing press as well as the vehicle engine with his little daughter during long walks with her.
Because of this, she even managed to work out the inner workings of her music box at the age of five.
Fascinated by the charm of cinema and stage in her childhood, she won a beauty pageant at the age of twelve due to her interest in acting.
Her attractive figure attracted the attention of German cinematographer Max Reinhardt. Therefore, Hedy Lamarr made her debut in 1930 in the German film Money on the Street, which was directed by him, at the age of 16. In her film career, which started from there, she first gained international attention because of her powerful performance in the movie Ecstasy, created in 1933 by the Czech filmmaker Gustaf Machati.
The 18-year-old at the time, the film garnered international acclaim as well as critical acclaim for its intimate nude scenes and sizzling performance that wonderfully reflected the emotion of an animal on its emotional face.
Therefore, the movie Ecstasy, which was awarded for the best director at the Venice Film Festival in 1934, was banned in the United States and Germany.
She was married six times in her lifetime and finally lived a solitary life. Her first marriage took place in 1934. Her 18-year-old husband, 33-year-old Friedrich Mandy, who was the third richest man in Austria at the time, was a manufacturer and seller of military weapons.
Mandy, who was in close contact with Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini and German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, did not forget to attend Hedy Lamarr’s business meetings with scientists and specialists in weapons technology.
Indeed, through those meetings she gained an understanding of the field of applied science, which led to the nurturing of her later scientific skills.
After the occupation of Austria by Germany with the beginning of the Second World War, she was of Jewish origin and managed to escape not only from her first husband who hindered her acting career but also from the Nazi terror against the Jewish community by moving to the United States. In 1937, Lamar, who separated from her husband, came to London, where she met Bert Mayer, the founder of the American film and television company MGM (Metro Goldwyn Mayer). He changed her original name to Hedy Lamarr.
He took her to Hollywood in 1938 and introduced her as the most beautiful woman in the world. There she was introduced to Howard Hughes who was an American aerospace engineer and pilot as well as a filmmaker. He took her to his aircraft manufacturing plants and met the scientists involved in the process, instilling in her an understanding of aircraft construction.
It instilled in her an innovative drive to build faster aircraft that could be sold to the US military.
Finding two books on fish and birds, she was able to combine the shapes of the fins of fast-swimming fish and the wings of fast-flying birds to create a new design for the shape of the wings of Hughes’ airplanes. When she showed Hughes her plan, his response was, “You are a genius.”
Hedy Lamarr, who played the main roles in several films including MGM’s Lady of the Tropics, Boom Town, White Cargo, was the American filmmaker Cecil B.’s film based on a Hebrew Bible legend. Samson and Delilah is a movie produced and directed by Dimmel in 1949.
Starring Hedy Lamarr as Delilah, the film was nominated for five Academy Awards and won two. Hedy Lamarr, who was an actress on the stage as well as in the television medium, marked the last performance of her nearly thirty-year film career in the movie The Female Animal produced in 1958.
About her creative mind, she said that ideas about improving various things come naturally to her. At one point, she invented a water-soluble pill that could make a soda-like drink similar to Coca-Cola.
She had the need to create something for the Allies fighting against Nazi terror in the Second World War. In the end, she meets the most suitable innovative assistant at a certain dinner. He was George Antheil, an American pianist and composer.
Accordingly, together with him, she succeeded in creating a frequency hopping technology that is able to prevent the radio signals given to the torpedoes of the friendly side from being blocked by the enemy Axis side. They created a code that allows the radio signal transmitter and receiver to change their frequencies at the same time.
They were then able to introduce a new communication system that could guide the torpedoes to their targets without interference. They also managed to get a US patent for it.
Hedy Lamarr, who introduced a technology that laid the foundation for today’s wireless communication mechanisms such as GPS and Bluetooth, was a genius enough to be nicknamed the “mother of Wi-Fi technology.”
She spent a long time in seclusion after her last film performance until her death on January 19, 2000 at the age of 85.
In 1997, three years before her death, Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil received the annual Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an international organization. She was also the first woman in the world to win the BULBIE Award popularly known as the ‘Oscar of Design’.
She was also awarded the Victor Kaplan Medal, awarded to inventors and patentees from her native Austria. In 2019, an asteroid named 32730 Lamarr was named in her honor.
