Hedy Lamarr

Hey there,

This month, ONU Femmes France celebrates a fascinating woman. We all know her face, we’ve seen her since childhood, but few of us know her name. I give you: Hedy Lamarr, the woman who inspired Disney’s Snow White.

She was an Austrian actress and movie producer, and was considered the most beautiful woman. But the reason I want to talk about her today is that she was also an inventor. Her most famous legacy is a patent called “Secret Communications System” she filed in 1942 and co-invented with composer George Antheil. It consists in the design of a frequency hopping spread spectrum method (FHSS), which she came up with during World War II in a spirit of enabling communication without being eavesdropped or jammed, by switching the frequency on which a signal was being emitted to another frequency in a sequence known by the transmitter and receiver. FHSS are know being used in wireless networks, such as Bluetooth.

Check out her Wikipedia page to know more about her!