Inventor of Spread Spectrum Radio Hedy Lamarr "SK"

QST de W1AW 
Special Bulletin 1 ARLX001
From ARRL Headquarters 
Newington CT January 24, 2000
To all radio amateurs

SB SPCL ARL ARLX001
ARLX001 Hedy Lamarr, actress and inventor, SK.

Hedy Lamarr, the sultry, sexy screen star of the 1930s and 1940s who also conceived the frequency-hopping technique now known as spread spectrum, has died. Lamarr was found dead in her suburban Orlando, Florida, home January 19. She was believed to be 86.

Born Hedwig Kiesler in Austria, Lamarr came to the US in 1937 after being signed by MGM. Among her most successful films was the 1949, directed Cecil B. DeMille classic, Samson and Delilah.

In her 1992 book Feminine Ingenuity, Lamarr described how she came up with the idea of a signaling device for radio-controlled torpedoes that would minimize the danger of detection or jamming by randomly shifting the frequency. She and composer George Antheil developed the concept and received a patent for it in 1942.

The concept was not developed during World War II, but when the patent expired, Sylvania put the idea to use in satellites. Spread spectrum also has found applications in wireless telephones, military radios, wireless computer links, and Amateur Radio experimentation.

A more-detailed version of Lamarr's role in spread spectrum is described in the IEEE book Spread Spectrum Communications, published in 1983.

editors note:

The new PCS cellular service used by Bell Mobility and Clearnet at 1.9 gHz use Spread Spectrum technology with the Qualcom CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) protocol.