Hedy Lamarr....this amazing lady invented the concept of spread spectrum communications and frequency-hopping while working on a radio guidance system for torpedoes that would be difficult for the enemy to jam. After patents were applied for and granted in 1942, it was given to the US Navy free of charge, though the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s and was first seen on US ships about the time of the Cuban missile crisis. The principles of their work are now incorporated into modern GPS, Wi-Fi, CDMA and Bluetooth technology.
Quote:
Lamarr was transfixed by the events of World War II and felt compelled to invent something to help the Allied cause. Focusing on torpedos, which were powerful but routinely inaccurate, Lamarr was inspired by a relatively new invention in her living room - the remote control on her radio.
A radio-guided torpedo would be far more accurate, she thought. But she also realised radio signals could be jammed.
Lamarr came up with the idea of making a radio signal that would jump more or less randomly from one frequency to another, making it harder to jam.
She shared her designs with avant-garde composer George Antheil at a dinner party one evening. Together, they worked on an idea that used a piano roll to randomly switch the signal sent between a control centre and the torpedo at short bursts within a range of 88 black and white keys. (A piano keyboard has 88 black and white keys).
And thus, the earliest form of spread spectrum communication - today found in most digital devices that communicate wirelessly – was born.
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