Hedy Lamarr

Did you know a glamorous Hollywood movie star helped create technology that makes Wi‑Fi possible? Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Kiesler) was a famous actress in the 1930s and 1940s — beautiful on screen and curious off it. Today we’ll focus on her secret superpower: she loved solving puzzles and used that curiosity to invent things.

During World War II she worried about radios being jammed. Hedy teamed up with composer George Antheil and they invented "frequency hopping" — a clever way for radio signals to jump between channels so enemies couldn’t block them. They even used ideas from piano player rolls to keep the jumping in sync, like two people clapping the same rhythm so the message stays on beat.

They patented the idea in 1941, but it wasn’t used right away. Later, scientists used the same thinking to build secure wireless systems, so Hedy’s idea helped make Bluetooth, Wi‑Fi and safer cellphone signals possible. Her story shows that being famous for one thing doesn’t stop you from doing something different — curiosity and creativity can change the world. Next time you use wireless music or games, remember the movie star who danced the airwaves into a new future!