To Celebrate Women’s History Month contest gave me an opportunity to research some lesser known, famous women in history. Most are familiar with household names who have added to our rich history, such as; Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, Anne Frank or Rosa Parks. It was a true eye-opener to see the number of less renowned women who have contributed in many different ways to our nation's history.

In reading short quips of many women I could have selected, Hedy Lamarr was a name I recognized. Famous for her beauty, she was one of Hollywood’s most sought-after leading ladies. Born, Hedwig Eva Kiesler, in Vienna, Austria on November 9th, 1914, Lamarr was an only child who received a great deal of attention from both her parents. 

Her father, a bank director, would instruct her on the mechanics of different machines, like the printing press or street cars. These conversations shaped Lamarr’s thinking. When she was five-years-old, she took apart and reassembled a music box, over and over to understand how it operated. 

Meanwhile, Lamarr’s mother, a concert pianist, introduced her to the arts with ballet and piano lessons from a young age. Lamarr’s brilliant mind was ignored, and her beauty took center stage. 

In 1933, Lamarr married Fritz Mandl, an Austrian ammunitions dealer. By 1937, the marriage was over. She once said, “He was the absolute monarch in his marriage … I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded—and imprisoned—having no mind, no life of its own.” 

She was unhappy. She had a brilliant mind of her own which remained unrecognized. Mandl forced her to play host and smile on demand among his insidious business partners, some of whom were associated with the Nazi party. She escaped from Mandl’s grasp by fleeing to London. With her she took the knowledge gained from dinner-table conversation over wartime weaponry.

In London, Lamarr was introduced to Louis B. Mayer, of the famed MGM Studios. Here she secured her ticket to Hollywood where she mystified American audiences with her grace, beauty, and accent.

She would go on to make over 25 movies, appearing opposite some of Hollywood’s most iconic leading men. Lamarr's greatest movie was the 1949 Bible-inspired film, Sampson and Delilah from Cecil B. DeMille. Her fame and beauty would put her in the same circles with US President John F. Kennedy and business magnate Howard Hughes.

For as much as she became known as ‘Hollywood’s most beautiful woman’, there was much more to Lamarr than just her stunning good looks.

Away from the film studios and cameras, Hedy’s passion was for science, innovation and invention.

With equipment gifted to her by Howard Hughes, a fellow businessman, pilot and innovator, Lamarr would spend hours in her trailer, on movie sets, testing theories and experimenting with technology.

Hughes took her to his airplane factories, showing her the manufacturing process. Lamarr became more inspired to innovate. She combined the fins of the fastest fish and the wings of the fastest bird to sketch a new wing design for Hughes’ planes. Upon showing the design to Hughes, he said to Lamarr, “You’re a genius.”

Lamarr was indeed a genius as the gears in her inventive mind continued to turn. She once said, “Improving things comes naturally to me.” 

Improve things she did. As the United States was about to enter World War II, Lamarr met George Antheil, another Hollywood entertainer and inventor. They shared inventive ideas and talked about the looming war.

One such idea came about... wireless communication. Unknown at the time, this would become a foundation for today’s mobile phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. 

Known to these two founders as frequency-hopping, the intention of this technology was a way to switch radio frequencies, therefore not allowing enemies to decode messages.

While awarded U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 in August of 1942, the Navy decided against implementing the new system. Though it was dismissed at the time, its significance would be realized two decades later when the Navy used this technology during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The initial rejection also did not deter Lamarr from becoming a U.S. citizen in April 1953.

Lamarr’s patent expired before she ever saw a penny from it and not till her later years did she receive any true recognition for her achievements. Lamarr was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the development of her frequency hopping technology in 2014 and dubbed as, “the mother of Wi-Fi”. 

Known as, the "Most Beautiful Woman By Day, Inventor By Night", Hedy Lamarr passed away in 2000 of congestive heart failure.