Sorry for being late with my contribution to Ada Lovelace Day… For the last few days, sleep and recovery have taken priority over blogging, but I’m feeling a lot more energetic today!
I wanted to recognise a woman who most people wouldn’t see as being a scientist, largely because she was a beautiful actress of world renown. It’s not the first time that a woman’s looks have taken precedence over her brains and it certainly won’t be the last and in the case of Hedy Lamarr, her contributions outside of the silver screen are certainly much more important to our daily lives (and I say that whilst holding her films in high esteem!)
Without her invention, modern wireless communication as seen in the various WiFi and Bluetooth standards wouldn’t have been possible.
Working with a musician neighbour, George Antheil, Hedy Lamarr came up with a means to enable radios to hop frequencies in sequence using a piano roll (the paper rolls that were used to store musical scores for playback on automated pianos). Their idea was that this would make it very difficult for the Axis forces to detect or jam radio transmissions to radio-guided torpedoes. A patent was awarded in 1942 but limitations in the ability to make the mechanics meant that the system wasn’t used until 1962, during the blockade of Cuba.
Frequency hopping is so important because it offers three significant advantages over fixed frequency communications. First of all, it allows a great deal more devices to share a single frequency range. Secondly, the frequency hopping allows for a degree of protection from interception: If you don’t know the frequency hopping order, it is difficult to follow the hops and if you’re listening on just one frequency, it just seems to be background noise. Finally, being able to move over multiple frequencies reduces the effect of interference on a fixed frequency, which is very important when working in the unregulated frequency bands such as those used by WiFi and Bluetooth.
It’s clear that Ms. Lamarr had skills far outside of those she was famous for yet even after this contribution, when she asked to join National Inventors Council she was told that her skills would be better used helping to sell War Bonds. She was finally recognised in 1997 when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave her and Mr. Atheil an award for this ground-breaking technology which is so important in today’s wireless communications.
Hedy Lamarr is an excellent example of a multi-talented woman and an unfortunate example of how our society recognises women’s contributions in certain fields better than in others. She was a talented actress and has her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame but it took nearly sixty years to recognise her talents as an engineer and inventor. Who knows what else she would have contributed to the world if that had been recognised and encouraged, too?
A few other Ada Lovelace Day contributions:
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- It’s OK to be gay
- Ada Lovelace Day 2010
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- Schrödinger’s Rapist
