A classic Hollywood actress helped invent Wi-Fi and other technologies

Hedy Lamarr is a famous female icon of classic Hollywood; she was also mathematically gifted and had received extensive information about a lot of about weapons systems from her first husband, an arms manufacturer. She was colleagues with George Antheil, an avante-garde composer with similar interests. Together, during the time of the Second World War, the two of them patented a technology that would allow radio signals to torpedoes to hop from frequency to frequency and avoid being jammed. The Navy rejected it at the time, but took it up 20 years later during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The patent figured into the development of numerous broadcast standards, including Wi-Fi. Due to the work of Lamarr, technology has been forever changed, and her work laid the blueprint for Wi-Fi that is so commonly used today. It is testament to the intelligence of this very indirectly influential female icon.