Spread Spectrum Inventor, Actress Hedy Lamarr Dies

Hedy Lamarr,, the sultry, sexy screen star of the 1930s and 1940s, who also conceived the frequency-hopping technique now known as spread spectrum, has died. She was believed to be 86. Born Hedwig Kiesler in Austria, Lamarr came to the U.S. in 1937 after being signed by MGM. Among her most successful films was the 1949 movie "Samson and Delilah," directed by Cecil B. DeMille. In her 1992 book, Feminine Ingenuity, Lamarr describes how she came up with the idea of a radio signaling device for radio-controlled torpedoes that would minimize the danger of detection or jamming by randomly shifting the frequency. She and composer George Antheil developed the concept and received a patent for it in 1942. The concept never saw fruition during World war II, but when the patent expired, Sylvania developed the idea for use in satellites. Spread spectrum also has found applications in wireless telephones, military radios, wireless computer links and Amateur Radio experimentation. "I read the patent," Franklin Antonio, chief technical office of the cellular phone maker Qualcomm Inc., said in 1997. "You don't usually think of movie stars having brains, but she sure did." A more detailed version of Lamarr's role in spread spectrum is described in the IEEE book Spread Spectrum Communications, published in 1983. Thanks to Andre Kesteloot, N4ICK and Bill Ricker, N1VUX.

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