Hedwig was an Austrian girl lucky enough to win the lead role in a salacious 1933 Czechoslovakian film...
...It wasn't her first on screen performance, but it was the starring role she'd been waiting for. Some brief on-screen nudity, along with detailed focus on Hedwig's face whilst "orgasming", gained her widespread international exposure...no puns intended. After the film's release, she exhibited anger over the exposé, claiming she'd been lied to about what would be filmed and what would be shown in the final cut...close-up lenses that were supposedly used to surreptitiously capture her "nuptials" (unbeknownst to her) and used in the film's final version. Hedwig's indignation might have been genuine, or it might have been contrived, either way, she used it as a springboard to bigger and better things, such as marriage to a wealthy, older gentleman...one of the richest in Austria...
Fredrich Mandl was the third richest man in Austria and he was smitten with this young movie star, wooing her, and capturing her hand in marriage. He repaid his new wife's affections by hiding her away in his beautiful castle...jealously forbidding her to socialize...lest she emulate the characters she played on the silver screen. He did allow her to attend to attend business meetings, with him, no doubt to show her beauty off to clients and other captains of industry. Hedwig was smart and scientifically minded, and even though she detested this "show and tell", she listened and her intellect kicked in...she remembered what was spoken of in these discussion and design meetings, gatherings that revolved around the weapons industry and what new armaments were needed for the next war. Friedrich being a premier ammunition manufacturer in post-Hapsburg Austria, allowed him to walk within the highest circles of the military, politics, society...personally associating with leaders all manner of business and war, and leaders such as Hitler, and Mussolini. Despite whatever influence he thought he had, he was Jewish. He was an ardent fascist, but that, along with his Nazi acquaintances, didn't save him when Austria was absorbed by the Third Reich in 1938. He fled and ended up in Argentina, well-off, with just the "right amount" of dictatorship (under Juan Peron) to reinvent and reestablish his empire of wealth.
Hedwig was tired of the controlling husband who couldn't resist hanging around Jew hating fascists, so in 1937 she snuck off to Paris, and then London, where she signed a contract with Louis B. Mayer to make pictures in far-off California...leaving Mandl and his fascist cronies far behind. She was to become an American film legend. She was called the most beautiful woman in America, and beginning in 1938, she starred beside the likes of Clark Gable, Paul Henreid, Victor Mature, Jimmy Stewart...Spenser Tracy. When WWII broke out, Hedwig was near the pinnacle of her career and decided to make the United States her home, anything different may have led her into the jaws of the Nazis with an almost certain trip to the concentration camp, and despite her stunning looks, she herself was Jewish.
As a child, Hedwig's father would take her on long walks and tell her about new technologies and how they were being used. While she had no formal scientific training, these early interactions sparked a deep interest in science and how technological things worked. Where and when she came up with the idea of incorporating varying frequencies into a radio-controlled torpedo to prevent jamming is anyone's guess. Perhaps it was something she heard in Friedrich's meetings...a kernel to stimulate her mind. Maybe she came up with it on her own...either way, the fact she was considering such an advanced device shows Hedwig was a woman of science, and believe it or not, she was appreciated for it. Before the War Howard Hughes and Hedwig were an item. She would offer up her very valid opinions and suggestions on the aircraft designs that he was coming up with and Hughes prudently set up a design team to incorporate her ideas into the work. While not all her ideas and experiments were successful, Hughes did use some of them, such as her suggestion of designing a streamlined wing into his aircraft for greater speed. I would chance to guess that it was from this liaison that Hedwig began thinking and developing an inventive interest in radio technology.
Remote controlled vehicles had been toyed with in one form or another since the 1890s. Nicola Tesla created a true remote-controlled wireless boat, essentially a toy roughly five feet long and demonstrated it in a test tank.
Hedwig, along with her friend George Antheil, a very well known Hollywood composer and pianist, came up with the concept of radio frequency-hopping both to conceal ship communications and to prevent a radio-controlled torpedo from being jammed, made almost useless. It could also be used to control a torpedo wirelessly, and the frequency-hopping concept pioneered by Kiesler and Antheil would make that torpedo difficult to detect and avoid. Using a pre-punched roll, almost exactly like the roll for a player piano, with 88 different "frequency" settings, the radio signal would hop around to different radio frequencies in a pre-set pattern. Like the notes on a sheet of music, this pattern would confuse and conceal any attempt for an enemy to figure it out and gum up the works. The beauty of it all, you could change up the frequency hopping pattern at any time. With this device, you could guide, or jam...radio waves would never be the same. You see, when two radio waves share the same frequency, or path, they jam each other up, and make the transmission garbled...or jammed up. If you want to block something, just pop around or "hop" the frequency spectrum and eventual you will mess up the guidance of that radio-controlled torpedo heading your way. Conversely, if you want to send a radio-guided torpedo, having a frequency hopping radio wave controlling it would make it near impossible to jam...radio frequency-hopping gives the best of both situations.
Hedwig and George got their patent in 1942, just as the United States was gearing up for global war. The United States Navy showed a little interest in Hedwig's invention, but not enough to really take it seriously. After all, who was this drop-dead gorgeous movie star? She needed to worry her pretty little head with more important things, like promoting the sale of War Bonds...
In the end, Hedy and George would have the last laugh. Their revolutionary radio invention would come to fruition, but not until the patent expired and the U.S. Navy was able to tinker and implement it free or charge...in the 1960s. Hedwig continued with her movie career and stardom, still one of the most beautiful women in the World, you know her a Hedy Lamarr...
And what of George? He was still a brilliant composer, continuing to score major Hollywood films, until he passed away in 1959 at the age of 58. Neither he or Hedy saw a penny for their invention, which you use everyday...spread-spectrum...every cell-phone worldwide uses it...and now you know the beautiful face, with the sharp, scientific mind behind it.