Hedy Lamarr, often proclaimed “the most beautiful woman in the world", was far more than just a pretty face.
The 26-yr-old Lamarr was thriving in Hollywood when, in September 1940, Nazi U-boats hunted down and sank a cruise ship trying to evacuate 90 British schoolchildren to Canada.
77 drowned in the bleak north Atlantic.
Lamarr, a Jewish immigrant from Nazi-occupied Austria, who had been making America her home since 1938, was outraged.
She fought back by applying her engineering skills, in collaboration with her friend the composer and pianist George Antheil, to the development of a sonar sub-locator used in the Atlantic for the benefit of the Allies.
The principles of her work are now incorporated into modern Wi-Fi, CDMA and Bluetooth technology, and this work led to her to be posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.
- America's Military History
Image: From "Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story", 2017
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