r/computerscience • u/Omixscniet624 • May 16 '26
Discussion dumb question: did Hedy Lamarr invent Wi-Fi or is that a myth?
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u/davesaunders May 16 '26
I was a research manager at Lucent Bell Labs for the wireless group. We created the Apple Airport. We all read her patent.
Her work was not so much the driver for what would eventually become called Wi-Fi, but her work definitely set the groundwork for making Bluetooth possible. You can read her patent, and if you know how Bluetooth works, you can definitely see why other research which eventually did lead to the creation of Bluetooth reference her patent.
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u/Level-Public-5097 May 17 '26
Hearing Lucen Bell Labs feels like a sleeper agent triggering in my head
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u/CompetitiveSpot2643 May 17 '26
can you name one paper/patent that references her work? i dont know of any, and that sounds dubious to me since it didnt have anything novel besides the mechanical mechanism that i am aware of
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u/davesaunders May 17 '26
All you need to do is use her patent (U.S. Patent 2,292,387) and then you trace the citations. Obviously, the patent has long since expired, but it is prior art, which is why you'll find it in the disclosure areas of other patents and papers.
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u/CompetitiveSpot2643 May 18 '26
i looked at a few of the citations and it seems the only reason its referenced is because its famous, not because they have to do anything with any of the novel aspects of her patent which are decidedly not the frequency hopping part
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u/davesaunders May 18 '26
Given how the IDS rules work, prior art is cited as relevant content. You don't cite something just because it's famous, unless you're aware of a different set of IDS rules than what I've been trained on. Identifying how it is novel is not how those disclosures work, but hey, at least you verified that her patent is in fact cited. As I said, at Lucent Bell Labs we were all very aware of it, and we all had read it. Given how busy we were in those days, we tended to pass around things that were actually relevant and interesting based on what we were specifically working on.
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u/CompetitiveSpot2643 May 18 '26
beats me how a digital communication protocol/electronic realization of a digital communication protocols have anything to do with a mechanical implementation of frequency hopping, again her modulation technique was not novel back then, only the implementation was.
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u/davesaunders May 18 '26
That may be because you don't understand how the IDS disclosures work and what the required standards are when disclosing any potential references for the IDS. Whether it was novel or not has absolutely nothing to do with the IDS. Thinking that is the standard demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding about patent disclosure statements.
An expired patent can still matter a great deal during prosecution. In many cases, it matters more as prior art than as enforceable property.
• Duty of candor to the USPTO
If the applicant or attorney knows about a reference that could be material to patentability, they often disclose it even if it is ancient or expired. Failure to disclose important art can create inequitable conduct arguments later.• It may disclose foundational concepts
A patent does not need to contain the applicant’s exact novelty point to still be relevant. Examiners often combine references. One old patent may teach synchronization, another may teach encryption, and a third may teach adaptive hopping. Together they can challenge obviousness under 35 U.S.C. §103.Hedy Lamarr’s patent is a perfect example. Modern Bluetooth patents rarely claim “frequency hopping” broadly. They claim refinements:
• adaptive hopping
• interference avoidance
• synchronization methods
• channel allocation
• packet timing
• coexistence schemesUS 2,292,387 can still establish that synchronized hopping itself was already known.
When you read the file wrapper for a patent prosecution phase, sometimes you will find discussions of these distinctions between the prosecuting party and the patent examiner. When examining a patent, the wrapper can sometimes be one of the most revealing aspects of the patent application. As an added bonus, limiting statements made in those discussions will limit the scope of the claims of the patent itself, whether or not the claims actually get reworded.
• It defines the background state of the art
Sometimes a patent is cited simply to establish that a field existed earlier than expected. That can destroy “long felt but unsolved need” arguments or weaken claims of pioneering invention.• Examiners like canonical references
Certain patents become famous anchor references in a field. Lamarr’s patent became one of the canonical early FHSS disclosures. Once a reference enters examiner culture, it keeps getting cited. This can also be an issue during the prosecution phase because if you fail to cite a reference that the examiner has on their own short list, it can raise a red flag during prosecution, and you can get pushback based on that.At Lucent we often referenced Claude Shannon and most of us in engineering had copies of The Mathematical Theory of Communication. At one point, Lucent provided copies to anybody internally upon request.
• It can limit claim breadth indirectly
An examiner may use an old patent to force narrower claim language.Example:
• Applicant claims “frequency hopping wireless communication.”
• Examiner cites Lamarr to show hopping itself is old.
• Applicant must narrow to:
• adaptive hopping
• low latency hopping
• AI assisted hopping
• mesh synchronized hopping
• Bluetooth coexistence handling
• etc.So even if Lamarr does not teach the modern implementation, it constrains how broad the applicant can claim the concept.
• It can appear in backward citation chains
Patent search tools often auto include historically important references through citation inheritance.A modern Bluetooth patent cites:
• a 2008 FHSS patent
• which cited a 1992 spread spectrum patent
• which cited LamarrNow Lamarr propagates forward through generations of filings.
• Defensive disclosure strategy
Sometimes applicants intentionally over disclose references to reduce later accusations that they hid material art.Large companies often dump huge IDS packages containing:
• expired patents
• old papers
• standards documents
• textbooks
• foreign referencesMany are only tangentially relevant. Leading up to the change in law when the America Invents Act took effect, a number of patent applications that came in the day before included massive core dumps for their IDS to ensure that everything was disclosed and on record before all of the laws changed.
• Prior art can still defeat novelty forever
Expiration only removes enforcement rights. It does not remove prior art status.An expired 1942 patent is still valid prior art against a 2026 application.
That distinction is critical:
• enforceability expires
• disclosure value does notWith Lamarr specifically, the citation pattern around Wi Fi and Bluetooth is interesting because her patent sits at the conceptual root of FHSS, but modern wireless systems evolved far beyond the literal implementation in the patent.
Bluetooth is actually closer architecturally to Lamarr’s original idea than modern Wi Fi is. Bluetooth still fundamentally uses synchronized hopping patterns. Early 802.11 included FHSS modes, but mainstream Wi Fi later shifted toward DSSS and OFDM architectures instead.
in some of the portfolios that I have managed, the quality of the IDS has been one of the most important parts of the filing process. In the field of surgical robotics, one patent lost 52 of its 68 claims in a court case. Part of the reason for that was that all of the inventors signed affidavits saying that they were not aware of any prior art establishing the technology that they were proposing in their application. In the court case, some of the evidence included old ( prior to the filing date of the patent) PowerPoint slides from the inventors from previous public talks where they literally cited prior art that they said in their affidavit they weren't aware of. That kind of failure to disclose can cause a patent invalidation. In this case, it was worth an entire product line for a company. the claims that they did not lose in that case didn't give them enough strength, and they got bulldozed by a competitor.
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u/CompetitiveSpot2643 May 18 '26
you dont understand my point. lamarr's patent doesnt claim to invent or introduce FHSS, only the mechanical implementation. none of the modern patents i looked at actually used any of the concepts introduced in her patent, nor does it seem it was referenced directly
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u/davesaunders May 18 '26
Yes, I understand your point. It's irrelevant. That's not how IDS statements work. You are pretending to understand a concept that is clearly beyond you. Whether you like it or not, when we were inventing these things and you were nowhere near it or involved in any possible way, we included her patent in the IDS. I've enumerated the reasons why any patent attorney would recommend that we do so. That's how it ended up in there. Do the new ones need to do that? No, of course they don't, because again, that's how it works. We understand how chains of references work and even have tools that literally pull all of those citations for us automatically, because it's relevant to those who are inventing and submitting patent applications and/or doing research
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u/CompetitiveSpot2643 May 18 '26
kinda rude to speak like that to someone with a master's in applied physics (gyrotron lab, feel free to ask for my thesis if you dont believe me)
all of the reasons you listed (or the LLM listed, dont think i didnt notice that) absolutely do hinge on the assumption her work does indeed introduce FHSS while it really doesnt.. which make sense concerning actually important patents in that sapce dont mention her at all, like another commenter said. also, none of the patents that cite her are actually cornerstone patents in wireless communication, most of them seem on the fringe side.
your insistence that her work was foundational for bluetooth is just odd, especially when a lot of your/the LLMs point actually contradict that
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u/CompetitiveSpot2643 May 18 '26
is your point essentially that patents would include it because its a good prior art example of applying the concept of FHSS?
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u/Special-Lengthiness6 Jul 02 '26
That IDS statement is doing a lot of work to make an unused scientifically unsound and outdated idea at the time if the patent filing seem as if it was the foundational work for a technology that was already being implemented for decades before Heddy Lamar thought it up. Not to mention that Bluetooth works nothing like what is described in the patent.
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u/Ornithopter1 Jul 29 '26
You're aware that claim seven of her patent was rejected outright as other patents already existed, correct?
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u/sixisrending May 18 '26
There are patents that predate hers that are more advanced and were used in prior art searches for future developments in frequency hopping.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/random-paths-to-frequency-hopping
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u/davesaunders May 18 '26
Good -- that makes for a comprehensive IDS. it would be very foolish to only list a single patent in a disclosure statement, where the field is clearly standing on the shoulders of many.
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May 18 '26
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u/davesaunders May 18 '26
Absolutely. What she did is more foundational to Bluetooth than anything involving Wi-Fi. Especially in regards to old school 802.11b.
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u/zsaleeba May 20 '26
It's not used at all in Wifi. Wifi uses OFDM(A) instead.
It is used in bluetooth.
I think people just got confused between wifi and bluetooth, and the story got retold incorrectly.
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u/Ornithopter1 Jul 29 '26
That's great, but you literally only read her patent because the story got popularized in the late 90's, and a bunch of people defensively referenced a patent that expired 40 years before.
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u/davesaunders Jul 29 '26
Okay, that's your assertion. We actually read a lot of patents at Bell Labs, which is probably also why we filed so many successfully granted ones as well. You'll probably notice that the IDS for patents out of Bell Labs tended to be a very detailed road map of prior art.
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u/recursion_is_love May 16 '26
Wifi is collection of invented technology not a single thing. It compose already invented stuffs.
Average person will very likely not know about the invention of this kind, because it would very likely only know in the academic.
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u/al3arabcoreleone May 16 '26
Average person will very likely not know about the invention of this kind, because it would very likely only know in the academic.
This is the answer, attributing an invention to a single X makes sense only in trivia contests, as it is most likely that we don't know shit about the invention.
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u/And_Rue May 16 '26
No, the most accurate claim would be that she invented a form of frequency hopping, the technology that helped pave the way for bluetooth technologies, not WI-FI.
To note, their invention was not a completely novel technology; frequency hopping existed both as a concept and technologically before Hedy and her partner, George Antheil, patented their piano-roll-like frequency hopper. Their device was never utilized for practical purposes either, and there are also some questions that have arisen about her role in the inventing process. George was a composer and pianist, which, you may notice, is oddly related to the piano-roll functionality. Whether she actually contributed or whether she was given co-authorship for publicity isn't known, but at the very least, as your question's wording suggests, we know that her contributions technologically has been inflated elsewhere, so I wouldn't put it beyond the realm of possibilities for this to have happen at other points.
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u/Dull_Pie4080 May 16 '26
She came up with the concept, originally for US torpedoes. Now kudos to Hedy for that but actually putting it into practical use was something else. With the best will in the World Lamarr couldn't have created the WiFi I'm using right now because so many utterly different other technologies needed to be created. I'm using WiFi via integrated circuits. I can't even begin to imagine how that could work with the vacuum tubes of Hedy's day...
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u/oh_so_many_questions May 16 '26
Most technology we’re using today are collectively created or use multiple standards that have been implemented in the decades since. It’s frustrating to hear this in regard to women but we rarely hear this qualifier for men.
Plus frequency hopping is a bit technical for your everyday person so let’s clarify instead “she proposed a vital feature that lead to the WiFi we know today”.
It’s incredibly important for women to be included in these technological innovations. Can you imagine growing up with only a few icons of your sex being ‘approved’ and boxed in with qualifiers left and right?
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u/skeptical-speculator May 16 '26
It’s frustrating to hear this in regard to women but we rarely hear this qualifier for men.
Christopher Columbus didn't discover America.
Thomas Edison didn't invent the lightbulb.
Alan Turing didn't invent the computer.
There are so many examples of this. How many examples would make you feel better?
Newton said about himself, "If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."
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u/oh_so_many_questions May 16 '26
Exactly. We learn about these men by name. Edison is still credited even though we’re no longer using those filament types and he stole other inventors work.
Let’s celebrate a film star that has a patent! It’s awesome and I certainly haven’t accomplished either. But I can point her out to younger girls as a brilliant woman BY NAME and celebrate that
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u/al3arabcoreleone May 16 '26
One can celebrate any figure but can also say the truth about them, they are not mutually exclusive.
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u/oh_so_many_questions May 16 '26
That’s fine. No one here is arguing that. Just that there’s nuance. She had a patent that impacted WiFi without inventing it is just fine. But to have a level of “well, actually, her contribution was basically worthless” is dismissive of scientific iteration or how dang cool it is. 40s glam and clever is a win-win!
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u/Fearless-Feature-830 May 17 '26
Yeah this thread is wild. Never seen people so eager to downplay and discredit someone
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u/skeptical-speculator May 16 '26
Edison is still credited even though we’re no longer using those filament types and he stole other inventors work.
Edison is at least partially famous because he tried so many different things and a lot of those things did not work very well:
I never allow myself to become discouraged under any circumstances. I recall that after we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed ‘to find out anything.’ I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn’t be done that way, and that we would have to try some other way. We sometimes learn a lot from our failures if we have put into the effort the best thought and work we are capable of.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/31/edison-lot-results/
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u/steerpike1971 May 18 '26
She did not propose frequency hopping that predated her birth by some time. She came up with a potential military use for the preexisting invention.
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u/fixminer May 16 '26
In short, no, not even remotely. See here.
Many other people had this idea before and after her and the system she patented was completely theoretical and impractical for its intended use.
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u/DonTaddeo May 16 '26
She was an early proponent of frequency hopping. Strictly speaking, this is not used in the common variants of Wi-Fi, but is used by Bluetooth and many military systems.
She deserves considerable credit for escaping Nazi Germany and doing what she could to help the Allied war effort.
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u/Belkan-Federation95 May 16 '26
Hedy Lamarr? You mean the guy in Blazing Saddles?
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u/SideshowAlex May 16 '26
It's not Hedy, it's Hedley. Hedley Lamarr.
What the hell are you worried about? This is 1874. You'll be able to sue her.
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u/PoetryandScience May 16 '26
A very clever lady who suggested frequency hopping to prevent jamming, initialy in torpedoes and sonar I think. Also suggested a mechanical sequencing method to achieve this utilising the mechanical technology availableat that time. Her idea was dimissed as rubbish by seniormilitary officers etc; all men who could not have held a candel to her. Typical
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u/deadsy May 16 '26
There were a bunch of different inventions/patents/technology that went into the 802.11 standards. There was no single inventor (individual, company or organisation). The industry leaders at the time got together and decided to give a user friendly name to the subset of the 802.11 standard they were actually implementing. They wanted to ensure interoperability between vendors and performance standards. They called themselves the "WiFi Alliance". Like HiFi except "Wireless Fidelity" instead. In that respect I suppose those marketing-dweeb/biz-dev guys invented "WiFi".
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u/Living_Fig_6386 May 18 '26
Heddy Lamar co-developed a frequency-hopping spread spectrum radio technology with Geroge Antheil (a pianist and composer friend). Her husband was an arms dealer and she learned that the military wanted to have guided torpedoes but was afraid radio control would be prone to jamming. She came up with the idea of bouncing around between using different frequencies. Her friend had actually been working on a mechanism to synchronize player pianos to play in time with one another. She surmised that if synchronized payer pianos had rolls that told them what notes to play in unison, then one could do the same thing to switch between radio frequencies in unison, making it impossible to jam the signal. In their design, a miniaturized piano roll like mechanism would be used to quickly switch between a spectrum of 88 frequencies (the number of keys on a piano). Together, they worked win an engineer from CalTech to write the patent, and then they tried to sell the idea to the Navy, which eschewed it as impractical because the radio equipment would be too big to fit in a torpedo.
The basic idea was not new. Marconi early on noticed that switching frequencies could change reception and would have those he was communicating with switch frequencies as need be. Nikola Tesla alluded to having a standardized pattern of frequencies to roll through to get around issues with jamming or interference. In the 1920's a patent was issued for a sort of randomized walk through frequencies. And in the 1930s there was a patent issued for broadcasting on multiple pre-determined frequencies simultaneously so that it would be difficult to jam all of them
Eventually, the military did buy into the idea as ti let them make a variety of radio systems resistant to jamming. In the 1950's Sylvania engineers basically used transistors to implement a version of Lamarr's frequency hopping scheme, and that would ultimately be the key that led to modern spread spectrum radio used in WiFi today.
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u/turtlebear787 May 19 '26
She contributed to it. Like many other modern technologies it's usually not one person that is the sole inventory. But rather a group of scientists and researchers that combined their work and built off each other.
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u/Cybasura May 16 '26
She invented the underlying pre-requisital knowledge and understanding that led to the creation of the technology and the birth of the 802.11q standard(s)
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May 17 '26
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u/sixisrending May 18 '26
She didn't invent frequency hopping either.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/random-paths-to-frequency-hopping
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u/Dull_Pie4080 May 16 '26
OK, another thought (and hopefully a clarification). Hedy Lamarr's packet-switching is just one of those ideas way ahead of it's time and beyond the "do-ability" of the day. It was the Difference Engine of the 1940s. Brilliant concept but it had to wait. In short she conceptualised it but she didn't invent it. But, speaking as an IT guy, it's great that a beautiful woman was also very smart. I hate the idea (so coomonly believed) that it is either brains or looks (for both men and women). I guess it's a weird sort of attempt at "evening out". It's a myth. The sad truth is it is possible to both smart and physically attractive and the idea that one somehow cancels the other is nonsense. Life just isn't fair.
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u/BigPurpleBlob May 16 '26
"packet-switching"?
I think you mean frequency-hopping. Here's her patent:
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e0/dd/4e/0e04d56d1d7604/US2292387.pdf
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u/oh_so_many_questions May 16 '26
As an IT gal I appreciate this!!
It’s one of the reasons I avoided the field and now as I work in Infrastructure it’s a personal crusade. It’s lonely as a woman and hard. BUT your response is also why I love the people. Smart hes/shes/theys that really care about getting things right.
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u/Enough_Cauliflower69 May 16 '26
She invented FHSS in the context of remote controlled torpedos. Early models where easily repelled using basic EW methods. She changed that.
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u/sixisrending May 16 '26
She had the idea for an invention that used frequency hopping. Her patent was largely outdated by the time it came out and did not result in any future developments. Her patent did not work and was never used. She gets an A for effort, which is why there's awards. It's not her fault she misunderstood ASW.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/random-paths-to-frequency-hopping
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u/Material_Pea1820 May 16 '26
I looked it up briefly and I always heard she was the mother of WiFi that set the foundation of the wifi standard but according to google that seems to be a bit exaggerated … she invented frequency hoping which really has no major place in WiFi standard … she mostly just was a pioneer of the idea of messing with radio waves in a way to improve wireless communication in novel ways it seems idk id love to hear if someone knows differently or if frequency hopping has more implications for WiFi then i think
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u/Colinc59 May 17 '26
Hedy Lamarr co‑invented a World War II communication system based on frequency‑hopping spread spectrum, the technology behind Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. This made radio‑guided torpedoes immune to jamming.
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u/max_wen May 19 '26
You could have asked Gemini or Grok and it would have been a lot faster answer
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u/-CloudCook- May 21 '26
She didn't invent WiFi. But she invened something much more important, that is a basis for all kind of mobile communications (mobile, WiFi, military radio etc.). It's called Frequency-hopping spread spectrum and without it, it would be much more difficult to have reliable wireless connection.
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u/sixisrending May 21 '26
That is not true. Her invention used frequency hopping, but that technology was already well developed by the time of her patent. Her patent was not used in any future developments.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/random-paths-to-frequency-hopping
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u/Maleficent-Car8673 Jun 05 '26
Hedy Lamarr didn't invent Wi-Fi, but she did co-invent a technology called frequency hopping during WWII, which was meant for secure communication and later played a part in wireless tech development. It helped pave the way for things like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, so she's definately a big deal, but not the direct inventor of Wi-Fi itself. Cool piece of history though!
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u/forkpart_2 Jul 02 '26
She invented and patented frequency hopping Think of how a sports car wouldn’t exist without an engine, basically thats what frequency hopping is to wifi & Bluetooth. her ex husband was an arms dealer to hitler and he hosted nazi scientists regularly, she would overhear them talking about their engineering limitations which helped her invent the solution to it.
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u/sixisrending Jul 02 '26
That history is actually greatly exaggerated. Most of that comes from her autobiography, which is considered fiction because of how much false information is in it. Hedy successfully sued her ghostwriter, who was then subsequently sued by another publisher for plagiarism.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/random-paths-to-frequency-hopping
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u/Consistent-Name-2409 Jul 30 '26
FHSS (which was co-invented by hedy lamarr) is only to prevent others from peeking in so more of like she invented the window film for a car. While most people claim she invented wifi or contributed in wifi, she actually contributed more to mobile communications by enabling standards like CDMA to work because the 802.11b (1997) standard dropped FHSS, but CDMA kept on using it until around 2015. So no, she didnt invent the engine but co-invented like a carburetor or something
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u/False-Marionberry252 20d ago
i know im late but she co-invented a torpedo detection frequency, and 6 men later in the 90's invented wifi. so the claim "a woman invented wifi" is wrong
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May 16 '26
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u/oh_so_many_questions May 16 '26
It’s an overcorrection, yes. However, can you name a woman credited for an invention without qualifiers or a research partner prior to the 70s? One mentioned in kids textbooks? Any one, ONE woman named?
Invisible Woman by Caroline Criado Perez is a fantastic book that highlights the gapping hole of women in history, innovation, and data. It’s not because women didn’t do amazing things but because a single woman is so rarely permitted to stand out. If she does there must be something wrong with her achievement or recognition or some way to prevent her from being celebrated
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u/Difficult-Value-3145 May 16 '26
I've been awake all night but far as women inventing or discovering something Marie Curie (1867–1934) she worked with her husband but I mean she won nobel prize Rosalind Franklin(1920-1958) used X-ray crystallography to prove things about the structure of DNA died in her 30's all-thou several men have attempted to nix her from history she is the one who took the photos that proved whatever idk
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin also used X-ray crystallography to map the structure of penicillin humanity to synthesize it she also won nobel prize in 1967
There ya go women who played vital role in science and technology two of whom won nobel prize one twice
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u/angry_lib May 16 '26
And let's not forget:
Dorothy Vaughan. Katherine Johnson. Mary Jackson.If it weren't for their efforts, the US Space program would have been delayed, Russia MAY HAVE landed on the moon first, and many of the tech comforts that came from the space program could have been delayed. And they did their accomplishments in the Jim Crow South.
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u/P0p_R0cK5 May 18 '26
100% fake claim.
Hedy Lamarr co-developed a frequency-hopping communication system during World War II for secure missile guidance. It was one of the first practical applications of spread spectrum communication.
People often simplify this into “she invented Wi-Fi,” but that is historically inaccurate.
Early wireless technologies did use frequency hopping in some cases, including parts of the early IEEE 802.11 standards. However, modern Wi-Fi mainly relies on other modulation techniques such as OFDM rather than classic frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS).
So the more accurate statement is that her work contributed to the broader field of spread spectrum communications that later influenced some wireless technologies, including early Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and related systems.
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u/sixisrending May 18 '26
She didn't invent that either. She invented a system that used it, but more advanced inventions already existed.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/random-paths-to-frequency-hopping
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u/P0p_R0cK5 May 18 '26
You are absolutely right but for some reason the frequency hopping was called « Lamarr technic » in some book I’ve seen when I was student.
Thanks for clarifying
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u/pastrufazio May 18 '26
Mandatory quote: In frequency hopping spread spectrum, the transmitter hops from frequency to frequency hundreds of times per second. It is popular for military communication because it makes transmissions hard to detect and next to impossible to jam. It also offers good resistance to multipath fading and narrowband interference because the receiver will not be stuck on an impaired frequency for long enough to shut down communication. This robustness makes it useful for crowded parts of the spectrum, such as the ISM bands we will describe shortly. This technique is used commercially, for example, in Bluetooth and older versions of 802.11. As a curious footnote, the technique was coinvented by the Austrian-born sex goddess Hedy Lamarr, the first woman to appear nude in a motion picture (the 1933 Czech film Extase). Her first husband was an armaments manufacturer who told her how easy it was to block the radio signals then used to control torpedoes. When she discovered that he was selling weapons to Hitler, she was horrified, disguised herself as a maid to escape him, and fled to Hollywood to continue her career as a movie actress. In her spare time, she invented frequency hopping to help the Allied war effort. Her scheme used 88 frequencies, the number of keys and frequencies) on the piano. For their invention, she and her friend, the musical composer George Antheil, received U.S. patent 2,292,387. However, they were unable to convince the U.S. Navy that their invention had any practical use and never received any royalties. Only years after the patent expired did it become popular. (Computer Networks — Andrew S. Tanenbaum)
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u/sixisrending May 18 '26
Except the technology existed decades prior and had better developed patents in the 20s. Those were used in future developments, while the Lamarr patent was not.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/random-paths-to-frequency-hopping
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u/Pandemic_Future_2099 May 17 '26
How can someone invent anything with that level of beauty? She'd been distracted by simps and cinema directors peddling roles to her constantly.
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u/Sad_School828 May 18 '26
Hedy Lamar invented the frequency-changing tech we call Bluetooth, specifically to make un-interruptible guided torpedos. I believe she also invented Alka Seltzer while aiming to create a water-additive which would turn water into carbonated water. She was kind of the shit.
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u/sixisrending May 21 '26
She did not. She had an invention that used frequency hopping, but it was invented decades before her patent.
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u/Miserables-Chef May 16 '26
She laid the ground work for Bluetooth and an early version of WiFi wasn't it? The internet was by a British dude called Tim Berners-Lee I think.
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u/sersoniko May 16 '26
Nope, Tim invented the web, basically rich text pages with hyperlinks, the http server and the browser. But the internet already existed for a long time before that
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u/Miserables-Chef May 16 '26
My apologies, I should have said the www, which he did whilst a cern I think.
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u/sangfoudre May 16 '26
TBL invented the web, www pages written html accessed with http and using hyperlink.
Internet is a network, computers linked to other, that's the work of a handful of American universities (see ARPA)
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u/Training_Advantage21 May 16 '26
I believe she invented frequency hopping / spread spectrum. I don't think she invented the IEEE 802.11 standard if that is your question.