Hedy Lamarr, Hollywood Actress who Pioneered WiFi and Bluetooth
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VIVA – Hedy Lamarr was a Hollywood actress, but away from the cameras, her passion for innovation spawned wireless communication technology. She was an inventor who pioneered WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth. She has the real name; Hedwig Eva Kiesler and was born in Austria on November 9, 1914, into a well-to-do Jewish family.
As an only child, Lamarr received a great deal of attention from her father, a bank director and curious man, who inspired her to look at the world with open eyes. Her father would often discuss the inner workings of different machines, like the printing press or street cars.
These conversations guided Lamarr’s thinking and at only five years of age, she could be found taking apart and reassembling her music box to understand how the machine operated. Meanwhile, Lamarr’s mother was a concert pianist and introduced her to the arts, placing her in both ballet and piano lessons from a young age.
Unfortunately, Lamarr’s brilliant mind was ignored, and her beauty took center stage when she was discovered by director Max Reinhardt at age 16.
Hedy Lamarr, artis Hollywood berotak encer
- hedylamarr.com
She studied acting with Reinhardt in Berlin and was in her first small film role by 1930, in a German film called Geld auf der Stra?e (“Money on the Street”). However, it wasn’t until 1932 that Lamarr gained name recognition as an actress for her role in the controversial film, Ecstasy, as quoted from the Women History site.
Austrian munitions dealer, Fritz Mandl, became one of Lamarr’s adoring fans when he saw her in the play Sissy. Lamarr and Mandl married in 1933 but it was short-lived.
She once said, “I knew very soon that I could never be an actress while I was his wife. He was the absolute monarch in his marriage. I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded and imprisoned having no mind, no life of its own.”
