File under: More things your teachers didn’t tell you

August 11, 1942
Actress Hedy Lamarr (that’s Hedy not Hedley) and composer George Antheil received a patent for a frequency hopping, spread spectrum communication system that will later became the basis for the technology behind Wi-Fi and wireless telephones.

In 1997, she and George Anthiel were honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award. And later in the same year, Lamarr became the first female recipient of the BULBIEGnass Spirit of Achievement Award, a prestigious lifetime accomplishment prize for inventors that is dubbed “The Oscars of Inventing.” It’s rumored that when told of her being given these awards, Miss Lamarr told her son, “It’s about time.

And so it goes

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