The Movie Goddess who Invented WiFi

EXIT 92 on I-4, to Altamonte Springs and Casselberry FL

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"Casselberry is the retirement home and death place of a fascinating cast of characters.


What does the Jewish wife of Hitler’s Arms producer, a major Hollywood Starlet, Howard Hughes girlfriend, and the creator of the original tech that created both wifi and bluetooth have in common? ​

​The answer is, drum roll please, they were all one woman.  That woman was Austrian immigrant and Hollywood golden girl Hedy Lamarr.


Best remembered perhaps for playing Delilah to Victor Mature’s Samson in the 1949 classic Samson and Delilah, Hedy was a European beauty queen who before World War Two, fled her Nazi husband because he was enthusiastically underwriting Hitler's hateful war machine.

The fact that the beauty queen was isolated in her husband’s castle did not prohibit her from accompanying him on business trips to meet arms engineers and scientists.  A  rank amateur, still science fascinated her.


Already a rising star in European Film, her husband disapproved of his 19 year old wife playing sexy ingenues. So she fled the gilded birdcage, jumped the pond, and ended up with a man immensely more wealthy.  Hedy landed in Hollywood and soon was the girl friend of aeronautical pioneer and billionaire Howard Hughes. ​

In the 1930’s Howard owned quite a few businesses including TWA Airlines, RKO Movie Studios, and his two cash cows, Hughes Tool and Hughes Aerospace. Hughes Tool had a patent on drill bits for oil rigs. But Hughes Aerospace made things that fly.  Unlike Hedy’s ex husband, during Hedy’s downtimes between films, Howard arranged consultations with his engineers and scientists.  A student of life, it is rumored that Hedy encouraged Howard to emulate the streamline aspects of birds, insects, even rain drops to make his planes fly faster.  No surprise, Howard won many world speed records in the 1930’s.


Then World War Two broke out. Hedy felt useless.  She loathed the fascists.  So she started to apply her creativity to make tools which would be helpful for the allies.  In her spare time, Hedy created a frequency hopping technology that aided radio controlled torpedoes from being jammed. ​

Later frequency hopping tech became the basis of tech in blue tooth and wifi.


Reviewing the documentary of Hedy entitled Bombshell, Forbes Magazine writer, Shivaune Field, wrote an article entitled: “Hedy Lamarr: The Incredible Mind Behind Secure WiFi, GPS And Bluetooth.” Ms Fields asserts that, “The striking movie star may be most well-known for her roles in the 1940s Oscar-nominated films ‘Algiers’ and ‘Sampson and Delilah.’ But it is her technical mind that is her greatest legacy.” ​

​Hedy’s musings were patented and became the basis for much of the internet some 50 years later.   “The brains of people are more interesting than the looks I think,” Hedy admitted in 1990, 10 years before she passed here in Casselberry, Florida.

So in sum, maybe we misspoke earlier when we said the thing Hedy was best known for, was her role in 'Samson and Delilah'. Perhaps in all likelihood, Hedy may one day be recalled as the mother of the internet.


So move over Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergei Bin, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. There is a new girl in the pantheon of Tech Titans.  

And best of all, that Beauty Queen was no pasty nerd!


Pretty cool, huh?"


#wifi #Bluetooth #HedyLamarr #Frequency #Moviestar #ForbesMagazine #ShivauneField #Jewish #HowardHughes #TWA #RKO #Hollywood #MarkZukerberg #SteveJobs

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