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I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.~Jay Gould
Wed Mar 24, 2010 at 06:00:00 AM MST
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Ada Lovelace Day celebrates the achievements
of women in technology and science...
 | Sometime around 1933 the golden age movie goddess Hedy Lamarr invented a radio-controlled torpedo. Sadly, she soon discovered that the radio signals used to guide the weapons could be easily jammed since they were broadcast on but a single frequency.
Several years later, after meeting the composer George Antheil, she revived the idea and developed the concept of frequency hopping to solve the problem of signal jamming. This early version of frequency hopping used a player-piano roll to bounce the radio-guide signal between 88 frequencies. |
Unfortunately, given the technology of the day, this idea was unwieldy-- too advanced to be feasible. Lamarr and Antheil did manage to secure a patent for it.
It was not until 1998 that the wireless technology developer Wi-LAN acquired a 49 percent claim to the patent from Hedy Lamarr. Frequency hopping serves as a basis for today's ubiquitous spread-spectrum communication technology. |
| hhex65 :: Ada Lovelace Day: Hedy Lamarr |
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