Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr

presentation by chiara federici

Start

Life

Hedy Lamarr was born on 9th November 1914 as Hedwig Eva Marie Kiesler. She was the only child of Emil Kiesler, a successful bank manager, and Gertrude Kiesler who was a pianist. Her parents were from a Jewish family but Hedy was catholic Lamarr began her acting career at a very young age.

She showed interest in theatre and film while she was still a child. At 12 years old, Lamarr won the Vienna beauty contest and she made her first film at age 17. Her father would also take her for walks and explain how various technologies functioned. She later became a citizen of the United States in 1953, at age 38.

Marriage and children

Lamarr was first married by Friedrich Mandi. The couple divorced, and she got married to five other men before her final divorce in 1965. Lamarr had three children and she remained unmarried for the last 35 years of her life before she died.

Acting career

She worked with a lot of productions. It was not until 1932 that she was recognized after she played in the German film Exstase. This film made her recognized by Hollywood producers.

Once she got into Hollywood, she resorted to change her name to Hedy Lamarr. She starred in her first Hollywood film Algiers (1938) which made her a huge star. She was also featured in other popular films and she worked with a lot of popular actors

Invention

Apart from being a beautiful and talented actress, Lamarr was noted for her work of invention in the beginning of World War II. She was extremely intelligent, and she thought about an innovative idea that later made her the mind behind WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth. Lamarr admitted that invention ideas came naturally to her, and it was something that she found easy to do. When she settled in Beverly Hills, Lamarr met with Howard Hughes and John. F. Kennedy who furnished her with experiment equipment. She took advantage of her downtime from her acting career to experiment and come up with new inventions.

Lamarr admitted that her role was on the creative work of the invention while her co-inventor, George Antheil, did the chemical part. In 1942, Lamarr and Antheil, patented their “Secret Communication System.” Their patent aimed to solve the problem where enemies blocked signals from missiles controlled by radio during the World War II. This way, the Nazis could not detect the Allied Torpedos.

Here Although the idea was difficult to implement because of the technology of the time, Lamarr’s idea was significant for the cell phone industry. The military did not also take much consideration especially because the invention came from outside the military. Currently, several spread -spectrum technologies are used in the Bluetooth and Wifi's technology. Although she was officially recognized for her contribution to technology by the US military, Lamarr did not receive any compensation that was right for her ideas.

Death

In her final years, Lamarr communicated with the outside world only by telephone. She did not spend time with anyone in person during the last decades of her life. In January 2000, Lamarr passed on in Casselberry, Florida, aged 85. She was cremated as per her wishes and her ashes were spread in Austria’s Vienna Woods.

My reflection...

I think Hedy was really courageus becouse she didn't listen the people that said her: "You can't do this becouse you are only a pretty actress". If now we had the Wi-Fi is only becouse Hady had the courage to not listen this people and believe in her skills. In her historycal period women didn't have same rights as men. They thought women can't be intelligent as a man and if a woman was intelligent and beautiful at the same time, men proved to stop her. But Hedy and a lot of the other women didn't listen them: they know that they were right. I think that men were scared about to see a woman strong as a man. When Hedy was a girl, the change of women rights it has just started: when she was born (1914) women didn't have the right to vote. She lived in a period of change and struggles for same rights, she lived during one of the worse wars, she had to escape from her home and from her husband becouse there she wasn't safe. When the word discovered the important of her project she didn't recive any compensation for her work, surely for a man it was different, but Hedy is remembered only like a good actress. It isn't right. Why are women understimate? Why do men think women can't be like them? This metods of thinking comes from the past and i think, now, we have the responsability to change the things: we have all the instruments to do that. It's all in our hands.

"Try everything. Participate in everything. Meet everyone. This is the secret of the life."

-Hedy Lamarr

Thanks for the attention!