Meet Hedy Lamarr, whose invention powered wi-fi tech

BANGALORE, INDIA; Beauty with brains is as rare a combination as an actress being an inventor. For all her talent, Austrian-American actress Hedy Lamarr was everything that seemed impossible-- an envious blend of good looks, success and of course, beautiful brains.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that your Bluetooth would have taken much longer to arrive if not for Lamarr's invention of war technology that paved way for wireless communication.

That was Lamarr, Hollywood's seductive actress and commonly called as one of most beautiful women in the world, who shot to fame for shooting an orgasm scene in her movie Ecstacy. Sadly, her sex symbol shadowed the inventor in her.

Born as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, she always said, "I can excuse everything but boredom. Boring people don't have to stay that way."

True to her words, Lamarr experimented with everything she saw. In 1940s co-invented-- with avante garde composer George Antheil-- an early technique for spectrum communications and frequency hopping, essential to wireless communication.

In his new book "Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World", writer Richard Rhodes pays tribute to the superstar.

Lamarr and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as COFDM used in Wi-Fi network connections and CDMA used in some cordless and wireless telephones.

Nothing could stop Lamarr, not even her six husbands. At 19, Lamarr married Friedrich Mandl, a Vienna-based arms manufacturer, who was so possessive of her that he prevented her from pursuing her acting career.

He took her to meetings with technicians and business partners and there the mathematically talented Lamarr learned about military technology.

One fine day in 1937, she escaped the marriage. Later she met Louis B. Mayer in London. On his insistence, changed her name to Hedy Lamarr, the surname in homage to a film star of the silent era, Barbara La Marr.

Her passion for technology took wings with her experiments with pianos which paved the way for frequency-hopping idea. Antheil and Lamarr submitted the idea of a secret communication system in June 1941. On August 11, 1942, US Patent was granted to Antheil and "Hedy Kiesler Markey", Lamarr's married name at the time.

This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam.

After a presentation of the technique was made to the US Navy, it was adopted only in 1962.

Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council, but was reportedly told by NIC member Charles F. Kettering and others that she could better help the war effort by using her celebrity status to sell War Bonds.

Till her death in 2000, Lamarr remained notorious for her seductive beauty rather than for one of the greatest inventions of mankind. For Lamarr, beauty was a bane.