This is a guest post by doubleshiny. doubleshiny is an education
professional and TV geek writing at endofshow.com. Although
known chiefly as an actress, Hedy Lamarr was a keen inventor and
mathematician who was interested in military technology. Her
neighbour was the composer George Antheil who was experimenting
with automated musical instruments such as player pianos.
Together they developed a system based on the perforations on
player piano rolls, where a signal could switch between multiple
frequencies to make radio controlled object such as torpedoes
harder for the enemy to jam or detect. The patent was applied
for in 1941 and was designed to assist the US military as a
secret communication system, but it wasnâ€™t put into use until
the Cuba blockade of 1962. I find Hedy Lamarr to be an
extraordinary woman whose work in the field was overwhelmingly
altruistic. She first came upon the problem of jamming of radio-
controlled torpedoes in a meeting which her controlling husband
made her attend so that he kne