Alexandra Bruce – Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-born American movie star of the 1930s and 1940s and who is less well-known as an inventor, whose work was ahead of its time and eventually led to the invention of WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. This 2011 PBS documentary is the story of her life.

https://youtu.be/fvZBNSxuSuo

Lamarr fled from Austria and a stifling young marriage to an arms dealer. A few years later, feeling uncomfortable with her Hollywood wealth at the beginning of World War II and having significant knowledge of secret weapons and the technological challenges of the time, she sought to do what she could to help win against the Nazis. She had the idea for a frequency-hopping signal that could not be tracked or jammed and with her friend, composer and pianist George Antheil, developed a device that synchronized a miniaturized player-piano mechanism with radio signals, which they patented in 1942. Continue reading →