During the late 1930s, Lamarr attended arms deals with her then-husband arms dealer Fritz Mandl, "possibly to improve his chances of making a sale".[41] From the meetings, she learned that navies needed "a way to guide a torpedo as it raced through the water." Radio control had been proposed. However, an enemy might be able to jam such a torpedo's guidance system and set it off course.[42] When later discussing this with a new friend, composer and pianist George Antheil, her idea to prevent jamming by frequency hopping met Antheil's previous work in music. In that earlier work, Antheil attempted synchronizing note-hopping in the avant-garde piece written as a score for the film Ballet Mechanique that involved multiple synchronized player pianos. Antheil's idea in the piece was to synchronize the start time of identical player pianos with identical player piano rolls, so the pianos would be playing in time with one another. Together, they realized that radio frequencies could be changed similarly, using the same kind of mechanism, but miniaturized.[4][41]
And then we should remember that the patent is on the way of getting the synchronisation, not frequency hoping as such an already know technology. And the connection to Bluetooth and Wifi get down to almost 0.
This post is inaccurate. Neither WiFi nor GPS use FHSS, nor is Lamarr anything close to singularly credited with FHSS' invention (the earliest patent is credited to Nikola Tesla). This also implies that the Allies used her parent - they did not.
Also Richard Easton is the son of the man who invented GPS and had every right to be skeptical of this claim, and it looks like Internet dipsh*ts have bullied him into deleting his twitter account over this.
This is mostly wrong: while she did invent what would later be called Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS), it isn't used in modern WiFi or in GPS. It is used in Bluetooth though.
I should point out that techniques like FHSS are only a part of what makes up a radio communication method. You can't say it was "the basis of Bluetooth" just because FHSS is one of the many technologies used in Bluetooth. She certainly contributed though.
He's the guy in the comment asking for evidence. Which I don't think is wrong, but it seems like he could've done some research and they could've posted a link for anyone who wanted to know more
Reminds me of that time someone got into a Twitter beef with Rage Against The Machine. They dropped the “it’s not like you have a degree in political science or anything” line. The lead guitarist went to Harvard for social sciences.
I'm from a Tech and Science background (unfinished Physics degree, most-definitelly-finished EE degree and then about 2 decades at the bleeding edge of Informatics) and some years ago came in contact with the Theatre Acting world for a couple of years whilst living in London (UK), doing various short courses, seeing fringe Theatre and getting acquainted with various (not famous) actors and directors.
Most were surprisingly (for me, at the time, with my pre-made ideas from my Science background and 2 decades in Tech) intelligent people.
Good acting using modern acting techniques and good directing do require quite a lot of brains to pull do well, IMHO, since in things like method acting well before there's any acting of what's on a script, there's a whole process of analysing them and various techniques for discovering the emotions of the character (best I can describe in a short space), at least for stage acting.
The only main difference in capabilities, I would say, is that at least in Acting there is a much higher proportion of Extroverts than Introverts, the very opposite of the proportion in Science and Tech, and Introverts are the ones with the personality type that's detailed oriented and hence more likely to come up with things like new or changed processes for doing things (IMHO).
This is one of the strangest sentences I've ever read, even with context. In the history of the human race, has anyone specifically accused good actresses of not being good with tech?
not every argument needs to be borne out of a counterargument. this is a mean comment in response to a genuine and meaningful analysis of human potential.
Note that this frequency hopping is no longer used in most WiFi networks today. It is, however, critical to classic Bluetooth, and BLE still somewhat uses it. I have no idea how it's related to GPS.
Indeed. Just speaking from a signals point of view, frequency hopping is not competitive for high bandwidth applications. It is however surprisingly durable in the presence of interference despite its simplicity. We’re seeing this play out in newer Bluetooth standards.
Calling Hedy Lamarr "the Mother of Wifi" because she invented FHSS is like calling E. A. Johnson, who invented the first capacitive touchscreen in 1965, "the Father of the iPhone".
Shout out also to John Underkoffler who was the technical advisor on Minority Report (and later Iron Man). The gesture controls in that movie heavily inspired the first smartphones.
Capacitive touchscreens are a big deal but it kind of minimizes the work of the other technology that goes into a smartphone, like wireless internet, low power mobile CPUs capable of 3D graphics, lithium-ion battery packs, etc., to say nothing of the design engineers that worked on the exterior, the hardware, and the operating system and deserve credit for the iPhone way more than he does. Crediting the holder of a patent from over 40 years before the iPhone hit the market with the creation of the iPhone is stretching the truth at best.
Capacitive touchscreens are the essential technology not just in the iPhone but in all smartphones. Without them we’d still be using flip phones and BlackBerry chiclet keyboards. I think it’s fair to call Johnson the father of the smartphone!
I was surprised by the choice of 'Mother of Wi-Fi' though - Wi-Fi hasn't used 'frequency hopping' as such since 802.11b was released back in 1999 - so very few people will have ever used frequency-hopping Wi-Fi.
GPS only uses it in some extreme cases I think, but I'm not an expert.
However, Bluetooth absolutely does depend on it to function in most situations, so 'Mother of Bluetooth' might have been more appropriate.
I guess my point is that it isn't a particularly important part of the design of Wi-Fi - they included it in the very first iteration in 1997 and realised by 1999 they didn't need it. Therefore Wi-Fi would likely have been born regardless of the invention; Bluetooth would not.
However, Bluetooth absolutely does depend on it to function in most situations, so ‘Mother of Bluetooth’ might have been more appropriate.
Considering the namesake of Bluetooth, the "Mother of Bluetooth" sounds like the kind of person who would have a tea party with "Grendel's Mother" from Beowulf.
There are plenty of women in STEM who deserve more recognition. Lise Meitner, discovered nuclear fission. Gladys West, came up with the theory that laid the groundwork for GPS. Grace Hopper, inventor of the program linker, without which modern software development would be impossible. Ada Lovelace, arguably the first programmer ever. But calling a woman whose name is one of two on a patent that furthered the development of a radio communication technique originally devised 40 years earlier by Nikola Tesla which Wi-Fi no longer uses "the mother of Wi-Fi" and putting her on a pedestal just because she's a woman, parading her (and only her) around every Women's History Month, and calling anyone who claims she didn't actually invent Wi-Fi (because she died around the time of its creation) a "troglodyte" is not a good look.
Okay, well, I'm a network professional with a specialty in wireless and a keen interest in historical wireless networking, and "non-standard" stuff is also quite interesting. I'm no Richard Easton.
I want to start with a disclaimer, by no means would I, nor should I be interpreted to be saying or implying that any contribution, regardless of source, isn't valuable. Whether it comes from a woman, or man, white, black, or any color in-between, non-binary, gay, bi, trans, whatever. The contributor is valuable and their contribution is always valued.
That being said, FHSS, has its uses, and it's been used in wireless. It's a valid technology that should be recognised as such. As with many things, it wasn't a singular effort, and nobody should imply otherwise.
As others have pointed out, the most commonly known technology which employs FHSS is Bluetooth; and trust me, trying to track down issues caused by BT interference is a nightmare because of it. Generally I avoid the problem by not using the 2.4ghz ISM band as much as possible, but I digress.
For those saying it's not part of 802.11, it actually is. It's an old part of the protocol which has long since been replaced and it is considered obsolete by the IEEE 802.11 group.
However, in the 802.11 protocol, sometimes called 802.11 prime (Wikipedia calls it "legacy"), it states: "[802.11] specified two raw data rates of 1 and 2 megabits per second (Mbit/s) to be transmitted via infrared (IR) signals or by either frequency hopping or direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) in the Industrial Scientific Medical frequency band at 2.4 GHz."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11_(legacy_mode)
All I want to really add, is that networking is a team sport. If companies and people didn't work together to make it function, then it wouldn't work.
Only by collaborating and working together towards improvement and an increase in the ability of the technology to work across all platforms, vendors, manufacturers, and devices, can we get it to function at all. This fact is as true now as it was when FHSS was invented. Everyone needs to work together in order to make any real progress. Otherwise, all of our wifi stuff would "speak" different languages, and nothing outside of a single companies product line, would work with anything else.
Everyone's contributions have helped wifi get to it's current state, and that should never be forgotten.
There is a great documentary about her on Netflix. It covers her love of science and her attempts to get her design to the military for the war effort.
Just chiming in as a network tech that deals with these terms regularly.
802.11, sometimes called 802.11 prime, to differentiate the first protocol from the 802.11 (WiFi) group. This protocol was not really every in widespread use. A few early niche cases, but it was quickly supplanted by 802.11a and 802.11b.
The b standard was one of the first major WiFi versions to see adoption, which used DSSS, or direct sequence spread spectrum. Which fell by the wayside because OFDM was faster and more efficient, which led wifi speed increases from 802.11g, through wifi 4 (802.11n), WiFi 5 (802.11ac), and WiFi 6 (802.11ax). The more recent versions use QAM (wireless N+), which augments OFDM with amplitude modulation.
Beyond QAM, speed improvements at this point are minimal and usually require wider channel widths to get any significant improvement, so 802.11 has focused on multiple access improvements and since 802.11ac, have been making improvements to MIMO. They started with SU-MIMO, then one-way MU-MIMO, then two way MU-MIMO.
I haven't read up on the changes in WiFi 7 yet beyond 6Ghz being added. I'll look into it after it's been fully ratified.
Long story short, they moved to 5Ghz and eventually 6Ghz, because there isn't enough channel width in 2.4 for WiFi 5, and 5ghz was getting a bit difficult to sustain for the speed they're trying to hit, so 6Ghz is the next logical step.
But that's not part of 802.11n or 802.11g or "a" or what we call "Wifi"... 802.11 in itself is a pretty long standard, including all kinds of different things.
She took on where Heinrich Hertz left off, and made it to the top of the Tinseltown heap!
C'mon... you know you wanna see a musical on the life of Heinrich Hertz.
Considering the man spent over a year working in a blacked-out room, trying to detect the faint spark of electricity transmitted wirelessly, it's gonna have a song or three about fumbling or stumbling in the dark.
Considering the man spent over a year working in a blacked-out room, trying to detect the faint spark of electricity transmitted wirelessly, it’s gonna have a song or three about fumbling or stumbling in the dark.
Bruce Springsteen has you covered with "Dancing in the Dark".
That's an incredibly sensationalistic way to put it. By that logic, the ancient greeks are the forefathers of WiFi, because they figured how to create static electricity using cotton and ambar.
You can (and should) give credit without overstating their achievement.