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Hedy Lamarr (2018)

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Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#11

Post by Brajeshwar »

Even though I had stumbled/read about Hedy Lamarr earlier, the book "How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World"[1] by Steven Johnson was the one that got me to read it in detail. The book is exciting and would definitely be one of my casual reading suggestions.

1. https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-Innovations/dp/1594633...

Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#12

Post by blipvert »

shellac wrote: post #10
mellosouls wrote: post #7

Note that this "Austrian-American actress" (I understand the helpful wording is aimed at non-buffs who may not recognise the name Hedy Lamarr) was a huge star in her day, an equivalent to - say - Margot Robbie.

Got her own joke name in Blazing Saddles. No greater honour.

And, in her gratitude, sued Mel Brooks for $10m!

Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#15

Post by evgen »

gsich wrote: post #5

Wlan is not using frequency hopping or am I mistaken?

No, but an early wireless midpoint between nascent wifi deployments and really shitty WAP in a world before data over cellular networks was Ricochet Networks. Frequency hopping over the public bands of the era (900MHz mostly I think) it was able to give decent wireless internet in the mid 90s to those of us living in supported areas of Silicon Valley. When laptops were a new thing and public wifi still years away it was fun ‘work remote’ in some corner of a coffeeshop when everyone else was chained to office desktops.

Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#16

Post by YoshiRulz »

TIL Kleiner's pet headcrab in HL2 is named after an inventor. I don't much care for the "great man" (great woman in this case) view of history, but this is a good story.

Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#17

Post by pomian »

Hedy's Folly, by Richard Rhodes. It's a very good book about Hedy Lamar's life and her fame, and work on that patent. It's interesting that the book is not mentioned. The author is the same one that wrote the Making of the Atomic Bomb, which I believe the movie Oppenheimer, was based on. All of his books are very interesting, revealing many of the intricacies, that took place in recent history, making the world we live in today.

Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#18

Post by anonym29 »

HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #3

Like many stories of this kind, the idea that this person "pioneered the basis" of these technologies seems massively overblown. What she and Antheil patented was a system that used frequency hopping to help guide torpedoes, using a piano roll to switch between the frequencies. They did not "invent" frequency hopping, which had been discussed in the literature for 30 years already.

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Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#19

Post by peoplefromibiza »

She surely was a brilliant mind, but calling her "the mother of Wi-Fi" is IMO a bit disingenuous, it is like calling Becquerel "the father of the nuclear reactor" because he accidentally discovered spontaneous radioactivity.

Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#20

Post by brookst »

anonym29 wrote: post #18
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #3

Like many stories of this kind, the idea that this person "pioneered the basis" of these technologies seems massively overblown. What she and Antheil patented was a system that used frequency hopping to help guide torpedoes, using a piano roll to switch between the frequencies. They did not "invent" frequency hopping, which had been discussed in the literature for 30 years already.

[flagged]

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