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.

Hello,

Last Tuesday, October 12, was Ada Lovelace Day. Many other artists shared their illustration of Ada Lovelace, as well as a short biography of her. I wanted to share mine as well.

As many said before me, she was a Mathematician and the first person ever to design a computer program when computers didn’t even exist, and at a time where it was often believed that women were only interested in “futile things”.