Women Inventors
Inventions by womenMore information on female inventors

 

Mary Andersion-windshield wipers

Hedy Lamarr was born in Vienna and she has shown that women can be many different things. Hedy was an actress and went to Max Reinhardt's famous acting school in Berlin during her late teens. She produced a movie, came to Hollywood and wrote an autobiography. She met her co-inventor in Hollywood where they began talking about radio control for torpedoes!

Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received U.S. patent # 2,292,387 for their Secret Communication System in 1942. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. This idea was controversial and ahead of its time and technology. The technology did not begin to be implemented until 1962.

"Films have a certain place in a certain time period. Technology is forever. "

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