Hedy Lamarr

Married at nineteen to an Austrian arms manufacturer with Nazi sympathies, Hedwig Kiesler fled both husband and country in 1937, reached London, signed an MGM contract from Louis B. Mayer aboard the ocean liner Normandie, and arrived in Hollywood as Hedy Lamarr. She made twenty-five films. The work she is now remembered for is not on screen. In 1942, with the composer George Antheil, she patented (U.S. Patent 2,292,387) a frequency-hopping signal system intended to guide torpedoes immune to enemy jamming. The U.S. Navy declined to use it. The underlying technique became foundational decades later for secure military communications, then for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS. Lamarr received almost no credit in her lifetime. The National Inventors Hall of Fame inducted her in 2014.