Today in 1942, actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received a patent for “a secret communications system,” a frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system.
Lamarr, who was promoted by Louis B. Mayer as “the world’s most beautiful woman,” had no formal training and was primarily self-taught. Encyclopedia Britannica:
Lamarr once insisted, “Any girl can be glamorous; all you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” That she herself was anything but stupid was unequivocally proved during World War II when, in collaboration with the avant-garde composer George Antheil, she invented an electronic device that minimized the jamming of radio signals. Though it was never used in wartime, this device is a component of present-day satellite and cellular phone technology.
In 2014, Lamarr and Antheil were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.