#7: Hedy Lamarr’s Wartime Communication Breakthrough
A Hollywood dressing room is not where most people expect to find the roots of secure wireless communication, which is exactly why this story still surprises people. During World War II, Hedy Lamarr worked with composer George Antheil on a frequency-hopping system intended to keep radio-guided torpedoes from being jammed. The invention was patented in 1942, but it was not adopted by the U.S. Navy during the war in the way its creators hoped. Decades later, the basic principle became newly appreciated because of its relationship to spread-spectrum communication, a foundation often connected to technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
