Hedy Lamarr who was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler to Jewish parents was best known for her acting career. She was born on November 9th, 1914 in Vienna, Austria. She started learning European languages at the age of four was also given ballet and piano lessons. As a teen, Hedy studied for a short time in Berlin where she had her first debut in theater in a Max Reinhardt production.
In 1933, Hedy married her first husband Fritz Mandl. Mandl was a weapons manufacturer who took Hedy with him for business effectively stopping her acting career during their marriage. Hedy reportedly learned a lot about technology during her husband’s business meetings. The knowledge she gained about technology only fueled the engineering interest she had gained from her father when he would take her for walks and explain how things worked. In 1937, Hedy left her marriage and escaped to the United States.
It was during World War II in 1941, when Hedy and a musician, George Antheil, partnered together to develop a way to frequency hop radio waves. Hedy was able to use some of the knowledge she gained from her first marriage to develop a communication system for torpedoes to help the United States Navy. In 1942, Hedy and Antheil were able to get a patent for their invention. The communication system used frequency switching to secretly guide torpedoes. The Navy felt it would be too difficult and too costly to develop this technology. Hedy gave the patent to the Navy and stayed quiet even when others began developing her technology. It was fifty plus years later when Hedy was finally acknowledged for her frequency hopping technology. Her technological break-through was what finally led to what we know today as WiFi.
Hedy and I come from very different cultures. She grew up Jewish in Austria and lived through two world wars. However, I grew up in the United States during a time of “relative” world peace. It would have been amazing to interview Hedy Lamarr if she died at the age of 86 on January 19th, 2000. If she were still living I would like to ask her about her inventions and what it was like to be Jewish during the beginning of Nazi Germany.
