Hedy Lamarr

Brains over beauty: The true Hedy Lamarr

By: Alina 

Have you ever used a Bluetooth speaker or a GPS system? Well, if you have Hedy Lamarr’s great ideas is where those breakthrough inventions came from. You know that one thing called Wi-Fi? Well, you probably don’t but a lot of the ideas used to make that came from Hedy.

Hedy Lamarr was born on November 9, 1914, in Vienna, Austria. She was born as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. She was an Austrian film director as a teen and gained notice in 1933. After her first husband, she flew to the USA and signed a contract to Hollywood with metro Goldwyn Mayer under the name Hedy Lamarr. After her first film Algiers she became an overnight sensation.

She was often referred to as the most gorgeous and exotic of all Hollywood ladies. She was mostly known for beauty and not her films. She had many husbands as a young lady. Fritz Mandle (1933-1937) Gene Markey (1939-1941) John Loder (1943-1947) Teddy Stauffer (1951-1952) And Two others.

Hedy adopted a son when she was married to Gene Markey. James Markey (Loder) was born in 1939 and died in 2013 when he was 83 years old. Hedy also had two kids with John Loder. Denise Loder who is now a film actress, was born in 1945 and is still alive today at 77. Hedy's other child is Anthony Loder, and he is a producer and actor. Anthony was born in 1942 and is still alive at age 75.

Hedy Lamarr was a famous actress who stared in many movies including, Ziegfeld girl, Algiers, tortilla flat, Samson and Delilah, and more. Algiers was her first big film and her most popular was Samson and Delilah. After acting for most of her life, she decided she liked chemistry so much she wanted to try inventing something. Her first invention was not successful, but I feel it could have been. Many people at her time drank coca cola, so she decided to make a little cube that you could keep in your purse. You would drop it into some water, and it would dissolve!

She continued trying to invent something that was successful. At the time World War 1 was happening. A big problem was that when they were shooting the torpedoes after they shot it, they had no control over where it went and if something moved it would not hit the enemy. When they shot it, the enemy could jam the frequency and the torpedo would not go where they wanted it to. To avoid this big issue, she began thinking.

Hedy's friend George Antheil was a pianist and had much experience and she began working with him. They had an idea that if they could make some kind of technology that hopped frequencies like a piano it might work. They ended up inventing a device that hopped frequencies and it kept the enemy from jamming the torpedoes. It was a radio signaling device that the enemy could not jam because when they tried to jam it the device would switch on to a different frequency. This allowed the torpedoes to make it to the target without being stopped by the enemy.

This was a big accomplishment, so she signed a patent and something crazy happened. The people turned down her idea and said a girl could not invents something good, especially a Hollywood star! She was terribly upset by this. In this time era women were not recognized for their brains, only beauty. She kept on with her acting career as one of the most beautiful actresses in that time. As she got older, she started becoming slow and was not asked to be in very many films.

As she aged lots of people started giving her snarky comments like “You were so beautiful.” That really did bother her and lead her to have many plastic surgeries. She did not have the greatest ending. She also got arrested 2 times for shoplifting even though she had the money. Her patent was never used, by the time anyone recognized her idea was being used the patent was too old. She never got paid for her ideas but was finally recognized that she was a part of this invention. She secretly moved to Paris and then to Casselberry Florida where she then passed away.

She passed away on January 19, 2000, in Casselberry Florida due to heart disease. After her death, her ideas were used with no real credit given. Her ideas are used in many things like Bluetooth, GPS, and Wi-Fi systems. Our technology may have taken a lot longer without Hedy Lamarr’s inventions!

Her ideas were very cool, and it certainly would have been different if her friend George had not helped her, not that she could not do it on her own, just his skills with piano helped a lot.

I find Hedy's creations fascinating and I do still feel those coca cola cubes could have been huge! I think that she should have gotten recognized for her invention because she would have been a billionaire. She was a genuinely nice person, and it is so sad that people did not beileve that a girl could be an inventor. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. Her story is cool, and I wish more people knew about her


Sourses:
Biography.com Womenshistory.com Woodgram.com Loder.com Bombshell (the documentary)