Posted on 08/02/2012 6:51:11 AM PDT by Texas Fossil
Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-born American actress. Max Reinhardt called her the “most beautiful woman in Europe” due to her “strikingly dark exotic looks”.
Mathematically talented, Lamarr came up with an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary for wireless communication from the pre-computer age to the present day.
The international beauty, along with co-inventor composer George Anthiel, developed a "Secret Communications System" to help combat the Nazis in World War II. By manipulating radio frequencies at irregular intervals between transmission and reception, the invention formed an unbreakable code to prevent classified messages from being intercepted by enemy personnel.
Lamarr and Anthiel received a secure secret patent in 1941, but the enormous significance of their invention was not realized until decades later. It was first implemented on naval ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequently emerged in numerous military applications. But most importantly, the "spread spectrum" technology that Lamarr helped to invent would galvanize the digital communications boom, forming the technical backbone that makes cellular phones, fax machines and other wireless operations possible.
There are few women in the tech fields, interesting to see such a beautiful woman made this contribution.
“That’s *Hedley*.”
Intersil Semiconductor has a conference room named after her.
“She didn’t build that.” - Obama
DAMN IT!
In one of Hollywood’s first nude scenes (maybe THE first) she ran naked through the woods :)
Yep, you had to get in the thread pretty early to get that one in.
I read about this years ago and about her idea. A truly remarkable and exceptionally beautiful woman, to boot.
“What the hell are you worried about...this is 1874; you’ll be able to sue her.”
/johnny
This thread worthless without daguerreotypes!
Technically, what she conceived of (frequency hopping) is different than the direct sequence spread spectrum used for Wi-Fi, but - close enough. Credit where due. Makes you wonder how many of today’s pop culture idols have enough between their ears to come up with a similar idea?
Let’s see...Lady Gaga? Some rapper? Whoever has been acting in all those movies that aren’t worth watching?
More history about frequency hopping.
http://www.eetimes.com/design/microwave-rf-design/4235369/A-short-history-of-spread-spectrum
... Nikola Tesla, the prolific Serbian-American inventor and radio pioneer, filed a U.S. patent, granted on March 17, 1903 which doesn’t mention the phrase “frequency hopping” directly, but certainly alludes to it. Entitled “Method of Signaling,” the patent describes a system that would enable radio communication “without any danger of the signals or messages begin disturbed, intercepted, interfered with in any way”.
Tesla’s patent details a system whereby transmitter and receiver are synchronized and hop between two channels (although the patent notes any number of channels could be used) by altering the carrier frequency in a predetermined sequence to avoid interference. ...
Yes, she was beautiful.
Yes, I had heard about Julia Child’s OAS connection. But not about Heddy.
Over time I have found a good number of FReepers are HAMS. Some like me largely inactive because of computers. But I am still interested in RF technology. (hate cell phones though)
In my prior life in military comms, I ran one of the hottest ‘rigs’ available. A full 50KW CW transmitter with a 640 acre antenna farm. Comms were a wicked 12kHz bandwidth, covering a frequency range from 5MHz (nighttime) up to 24MHz (daytime). Range was thousands of miles. This was all in the 60s and 70s - eventually replaced by satellite.
FYI my mother is a Swede from MN. She took a job in DC because of telegraphy skills she had. She and my father met in the train station in DC as he was preparing to ship to Europe during WWII. They knew each other 2-3 weeks before his ship left. Wrote during war. He had my grandfather send her a train ticket on his way back from Europe. They were married in my grandparents home the night she arrived in TX. That was 66 years ago.
I am not a ham. However I have been doing research on software defined radio in general and the GNU software defined radio in particular. If you like radio and you like computers, just combine them!
In 2003, Portman graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. degree in psychology.[26][28][29][30] "I don't care if [college] ruins my career," she told the New York Post. "I'd rather be smart than a movie star
As a student, Portman co-authored two research papers that were published in scientific journals. Her 1998 high school paper, "A Simple Method to Demonstrate the Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen from Sugar", co-authored with scientists Ian Hurley and Jonathan Woodward, was entered in the Intel Science Talent Search.[42] In 2002, she contributed to a study on memory called "Frontal Lobe Activation during Object Permanence: Data from Near-Infrared Spectroscopy" during her psychology studies at Harvard.[43][44] This publication placed Portman among a very small number of professional actors with a defined Erdős–Bacon number.[43][45][46]
she is also a commie pinko liberal democrat Obama loving fool.
LOL. That one liner made my day!
Her inventions have not gone unnoticed - here and others:
http://w2.eff.org/awards/pioneer/1997.php
Movie Legend Hedy Lamarr to be Given Special Award at EFF’s Sixth Annual Pioneer Awards
Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release
Burlingame, CA - March 12, 1997 - In what the organization’s spokesman describes as “a unique event both for EFF and for the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will honor former movie actress Hedy Lamarr with a special award this evening for her co-invention of spread-spectrum broadcast communications technologies. Lamarr will be honored along with Johan Helsingius of Finland, and Marc Rotenberg of Washington, D.C., whose work for civil liberties on the Net has earned them each a 1997 Pioneer Award.
Was never involved in Comms in military.
Ran with tech/engineers in NM, most of whom worked for one or other of the labs there. Super techs. I lived in NM 14 years.
I did run a Navy MARS station out of my home for 19 years.
To make a living I was a traveling salesman for 2 distributors for many many years.
I am a student of technology and a history student, for most of my life.
I thought this one was going to go in the pile with the one about Captain Kangaroo having 38 confirmed kills as a Marine sniper in Korea. But the story checks out.
“This thread worthless without daguerreotypes!”
LOL
I don’t care who you are, that was a good one right there!
At times the reality of legends are hard to trace.
Good example is Amelia Earhart. Was she a spy? Where did her plane go? Was she executed by the Japanese? All kinds of wild stuff out there. Probably somewhere the truth exists.
In the early 1950s my dad was a radio technician in the Air Force and was part of the occupying forces in Japan. He was stationed with a small handful of other guys at the Funabashi Transmitter Station, which apparently was where Tokyo Rose broadcasts originated. He told me that it was full of German transmitters, very high power. As far as I can tell from the web, there was at least one that was 100kW and from my dad's stories, there were more than that one. It could reach Hawaii certainly, which is 4,000 miles away.
More interesting to me was the stories he told about what it was like being in a remote, rural area as part of a small group of occupying forces. Talk about heady stuff, a kid from a small town in the Appalachians is suddenly on the other side of the world where he is treated like a king by all.
She's also a porn actress ("Black Swan" lesbo oral sex scene) who is an Obama supporter. I don't think of O supporters as smart people.
“Genius is one percent inspiration, two percent perspiration, and 97% Nikola Tesla.” - Thomas Edison
She was also the first “girl gone wild” with the first full frontal scene in a movie.
Of celebrity, she allegedly commented “...any woman can be glamorous, just stand there and look stupid...”
Spread spectrum frequency hopping........
She built that!!!!!!!!
“This thread worthless without daguerreotypes!”
PERFECT!!!
Edison was clever, Tesla was brilliant. Edison was a businessman, Tesla was not.
If I’m not mistaken the frequency hopping idea was based on the simple concept of the player piano roll. And I think (again not sure) that her and her coinventor were sitting at a piano when they had their inspiration. Since she not only could act, invent but was also musical.
I think that the enemy was jamming radio commo between ships and their torpedos. I think the idea as that if each end of the radio commo hopped frequencies according to a “key” that could be represented in a player piano roll, the enemy wouldn’t have the key and therefore couldn’t interfere. Apparently the technique wasn’t ever implemented by the time the war ended.
I could have all of this wrong but it’s how I remember the story anyway!
Don’t tell me, Posterchild posted it.
But you’re right.
(I don’t want to mistakenly get credit for another Freepers wit)
Saw that after the post button was pressed.
Definitely one for the books though!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.