What's the Frequency...Hedwig?

Had you told me that he original idea behind the modern practice of shifting frequencies so that a transmitter and receiver could talk to each other with less chance of being overheard had originated during World War II, I would have has a pretty standard picture of the inventor in mind. White lab coat, glasses, slightly unruly hair, etc. I would have been wrong, because the picture of one of the co-inventors would have looked more like this:

Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, actually patented a frequency-hopping system for guiding radio-controlled torpedoes and getting around signal jamming, along with composer George Antheil.

But as the story at the link notes, the military decided not to use the Lamarr-Antheil system, although the two went far enough with their proposal to secure a patent and military officials took it seriously enough that they would not allow the plans to be printed during wartime. The above picture is a magazine cover from 1997, the year the Electric Frontier Foundation honored her and Antheil with its Pioneer Award and a year before Wi-LAN bought a 49% stake in her patent for an undisclosed amount of stock. Lamarr and Antheil's proposal is at the basis of modern wi-fi systems.

Lamarr died in 2000, having lived long enough to see the validation of the idea she and Antheil developed.