‘Any girl can be glamorous, all you have to do is stand still and look stupid.’ – Hedy Lamarr
Google’s tradition of paying tribute on important days has seen a number of days commemorated in recent times. So, Google Doodle is celebrating the 101st birthday of Hedy Lamarr, an Austrian-American actress and inventor once described as “the most beautiful woman in the world”.
However, Ms Lamarr was not just a pretty face. Here’s why:
1. Born in 1914, Lamarr was one of the most popular actresses in the late 1930s alongside some of old Hollywood’s celebrated actors.
2. She had captured international attention as the first female actor to simulate an orgasm in a non-pornographic film.
3. Some of her films include White Cargo (1942), Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Female Animal (1957).
4. Soon she tried her hand at inventing and in the process invented an improved traffic light and a tablet that dissolved in water to create a carbonated drink.
5. She married a Nazi arms dealer and it was during this time she was first exposed to weapons technology at the dinner parties.
6. She was horrified by the events of World War II and felt compelled to invent something to help the Allied cause.
7. The Hollywood actress invented a weapons communication system that formed a code to prevent classified messages from being intercepted by enemy personnel.
8. The earliest form of spread spectrum communication (wireless technologies including present-day Bluetooth and Wifi) was thus born.
9. The first female recipient of the BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, Lamarr combined beauty and brains, along with acting accomplishments.
Who would have thought the ‘most beautiful women in the world’ could have developed technologies in the modern world?
Happy Birthday, Hedy Lamarr. ?