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The woman who made your WiFi work. (RF tech trivia)
Diogenes' Middle Finger ^ | August 1, 2012 | Diogenes

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.


TOPICS: Computers/Internet; Science
KEYWORDS: biography; hedylamarr; internet; magyar; pioneer; spreadspectrum
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To: posterchild

21 posted on 08/02/2012 7:40:43 AM PDT by GenXteacher (You have chosen dishonor to avoid war; you shall have war also.)
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To: Texas Fossil
Natalie Portman is also super intelligent.

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]

22 posted on 08/02/2012 7:49:58 AM PDT by trailhkr1
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To: trailhkr1

she is also a commie pinko liberal democrat Obama loving fool.


23 posted on 08/02/2012 7:57:16 AM PDT by superfries
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To: Texas Fossil
Read the story in American Heritage of Invention & Technology, Spring 1997, Vol 12 No 4, pp. 10 - 16
24 posted on 08/02/2012 8:12:23 AM PDT by sima_yi ( Reporting live from the far North)
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To: posterchild

LOL. That one liner made my day!


25 posted on 08/02/2012 8:29:42 AM PDT by Crolis ("To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." -GKC)
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To: Texas Fossil

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.


26 posted on 08/02/2012 8:35:55 AM PDT by DManA
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To: Gaffer

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.


27 posted on 08/02/2012 8:43:28 AM PDT by Texas Fossil (Government, even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one)
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To: Texas Fossil

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.


28 posted on 08/02/2012 8:52:24 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: posterchild

“This thread worthless without daguerreotypes!”

LOL

I don’t care who you are, that was a good one right there!


29 posted on 08/02/2012 8:54:55 AM PDT by Nik Naym (It's not my fault... I have compulsive smartass disorder.)
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To: Buckeye McFrog

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.


30 posted on 08/02/2012 9:02:46 AM PDT by Texas Fossil (Government, even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one)
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To: Gaffer
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.

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.

31 posted on 08/02/2012 9:13:35 AM PDT by pepsi_junkie (Who is John Galt?)
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To: Texas Fossil
thxs, for the background. ;-)

32 posted on 08/02/2012 9:39:12 AM PDT by skinkinthegrass (WA DC E$tabli$hment; DNC/RNC/Unionists...Brazilian saying: "$@me Old $hit; different flie$". :^)
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To: Spirochete
In one of Hollywood’s first nude scenes (maybe THE first) she ran naked through the woods :)

If you're talking about the 1933 film, Ekstase / Ecstasy, it wasn't Hollywood but an Austrian-Hungarian made film. It also had the first orgasm depiction (Hedy later said the director stuck a pin in her behind). The film can be seen on YouTube at (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY_S3_VaEP0).

There is a book called Hedy's Folly, the Life and Breakthough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr by Richard Rhodes.
33 posted on 08/02/2012 10:23:22 AM PDT by Hiddigeigei ("Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish," said Dionysus - Euripides)
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To: trailhkr1
Writing papers is different from actually inventing stuff.

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.

34 posted on 08/02/2012 11:55:21 AM PDT by what's up
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To: USMCPOP
Cracked.com had a piece about updated famous quotes.

“Genius is one percent inspiration, two percent perspiration, and 97% Nikola Tesla.” - Thomas Edison

35 posted on 08/02/2012 12:30:36 PM PDT by Hillarys Gate Cult (Liberals make unrealistic demands on reality and reality doesn't oblige them.)
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To: Texas Fossil

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!!!!!!!!


36 posted on 08/02/2012 2:16:02 PM PDT by petro45acp ("Don't" read 'HOPE' by L Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman...it will bring tears to eyes. BORE!!!!!!!!!!!!)
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To: Nik Naym

“This thread worthless without daguerreotypes!”

PERFECT!!!


37 posted on 08/02/2012 2:19:44 PM PDT by petro45acp ("Don't" read 'HOPE' by L Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman...it will bring tears to eyes. BORE!!!!!!!!!!!!)
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To: Hillarys Gate Cult

Edison was clever, Tesla was brilliant. Edison was a businessman, Tesla was not.


38 posted on 08/02/2012 2:24:42 PM PDT by USMCPOP (Father of LCpl. Karl Linn, KIA 1/26/2005 Al Haqlaniyah, Iraq)
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To: Texas Fossil

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!


39 posted on 08/02/2012 3:25:36 PM PDT by 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten
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To: petro45acp; posterchild

Don’t tell me, Posterchild posted it.

But you’re right.

(I don’t want to mistakenly get credit for another Freepers wit)


40 posted on 08/02/2012 6:17:30 PM PDT by Nik Naym (It's not my fault... I have compulsive smartass disorder.)
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