Hedy’s Folly
Author: Richard Rhodes
Publisher: Doubleday
Price: $26.95

Richard Rhodes’s book talks about Hollywood superstar Hedy Lamarr who invented mobile phone technology, says Navaratna Rajaram

Hedy Lamarr is virtually unknown to today’s movie fans, but in the 1940s and the 1950s she was one of the superstars of Hollywood. Her Biblical epic, Samson and Delilah, co-starring the equally forgotten Victor Mature, was one of the biggest hits of the era. But she is known today for pioneering the technology known as spread spectrum, used in a range of applications from missile control to mobile phones and Wi-Fi networks. This extraordinary story is the subject of Hedy’s Folly by Richard Rhodes, known for his authoritative history of the atom bomb.

Quite early Lamarr was hailed as the “most beautiful woman in the world”, a label she hated. She felt it led to her being typecast as a siren and prevented her from getting roles where she could display her acting talent. She never gained recognition as an actress. “My face is my worst enemy,” she would often complain. But as the book shows, her life had more drama than any role that any actress could hope for.

Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1913, the only child of a wealthy and cultured Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. Her father was a successful banker, but encouraged his daughter’s interest in science for which she showed a precocious talent. She may even have been an unrecognised mathematical prodigy. From age 10 she was also trained in piano and ballet.

Her extraordinary beauty brought her to the attention of the great German director Max Reinhardt, who starred her in major roles in several German films. It was Reinhardt who called her the most beautiful woman. But what brought her fame (and notoriety) was her supposedly scandalous scenes (for the time) in the 1933 Czech film, Ecstasy. Soon she married Friedrich Mandl, a wealthy arms manufacturer much older than her.

Mandl recognised her scientific talent and took her to his company’s technical meetings. Mandl’s customers included Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Lamarr saw Mussolini and Hitler at grand parties which Mandl gave. Mandl was an extremely jealous husband who kept his young wife a virtual prisoner in his castle. Also, being Jewish (as was Mandl) she found his dealings highly distasteful. Finally, in 1937, Lamarr managed to escape to Paris with a large quantity of jewels. Soon she was in Hollywood as an established star under the name Hedy Lamarr.

Her first important role was as Tondelayo in the 1942 classic, White Cargo. It contains what is probably her most famous movie line: “Tondelayo make tiffin.” She showed poor judgement in turning down lead roles in Casablanca and Gaslight. Both went to Ingrid Bergman, sealing her reputation as the greatest actress of the era. In 1949, Lamarr starred as Delilah in the hugely successful, Samson and Delilah, the role for which she is best remembered.

During World War II, Lamarr applied to the US Government offering her services as a defence scientist. She was not taken seriously. She was told she could make a better contribution selling defence bonds, which she did with great success. But she felt she had more to offer to the war effort. She saw that torpedoes used by the allies against German submarines lacked accuracy and often missed their target. She knew enough science and, what is more, the practical application of it to see that radio signals could be used to guide torpedoes to their target.

What is remarkable is that she also saw the key problem with radio control — that the signal frequency could be detected and jammed by the enemy rendering the torpedo useless. This shows a thorough grasp of the problem and its practical needs. Her solution to the problem was a stroke of genius — the transmission frequency would be changed at random. She called it frequency hopping. Later it became the basis for spread spectrum communication.

Unlike most amateurs who are happy to have found the answer, Lamarr wanted to turn her idea into something practical in the war against the Nazis. (Her father had died in Vienna when the Nazis took over Austria, and Lamarr managed to rescue her mother.) With that goal she turned to the avant-garde composer George Antheil who had also shown a mechanical turn of mind in controlling 16 pianos in his work, Ballet Mecanique. With a little help from a physics professor, Lamarr and Antheil patented her invention of radio control by frequency hopping (US Patent Number 2,292,387). They donated it to the war effort.

This shows that to Lamarr science was more than a hobby; few scientists can claim inventions of such importance. She did not socialise on the Hollywood circuit, and spent most evenings studying science and working on inventions. She had others but none so important. Her design was not used for nearly two decades; its first use was in the 1962 Cuban missile blockade. Now it is used everywhere.

Lamarr received neither money nor credit for her invention until 1997 when she was finally given the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award. When she heard of it, the 84-year-old Lamarr simply said, “It is about time.” She died in January 2000.

It’s fun reading this book.

The reviewer is a scientist and historian