In the program "Historically yours" on Europe 1 this Friday, the journalist David Castello-Lopes looks back on the origin of wifi, which would not exist without the brilliant idea of an American actress during the Second World War.
>> Every day in
Historically yours
, David Castello-Lopes looks back on the origins of an object or a concept.
This Friday, he looks at wifi, without which the digital revolution would not have radically changed our daily lives over the past 20 years.
Indirectly, Hedy Lamarr, an Austrian naturalized American actress, has a lot to do with it.
Passionate about telecommunications, during World War II she developed an innovative torpedo remote control system.
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Sex symbol and budding engineer
For the generation born in the Roaring Twenties (1920-1930s), the most sensual scene in the world was in
Ecstasy
, a 1933 film directed by Czech director Gustav Machaty.
Ecstasy
tells the story of a young girl who cheats on her husband with a younger, more handsome man.
It is considered the first film in history to show a female orgasm, in a rather veiled way, but still unambiguous.
At the time, the scandal was huge.
With this success full of suffers, the main actress, Hedy Lamarr, caught the attention of American studios.
In 1938, she signed a contract with one of the biggest Hollywood studios, MGM.
She is then considered one of the most beautiful women in the world, serves as a model for Walt Disney's Snow White but also for Catwoman.
Along with this sex symbol career, and even though she had left school at 16, Hedy Lamarr was very interested in engineering.
She would invent things in the evening, at home, between two shoots ...
The invention of the "frequency hopping communication system"
And then came World War II.
One of the main ways that British ships sunk Nazi submarines was by torpedoing them.
These torpedoes were unmanned with a radio frequency, but the Germans quickly understood how to interfere with the chosen frequency, and could thus deflect the torpedo.
Hedy Lamarr has heard of this problem.
She then invented with the pianist Georges Antheil a system allowing to change on the fly the frequency of communication between the torpedo controller and the torpedo.
This system, called "frequency hopping communication system", is the technical basis without which wifi could not have seen the light of day.
The frequency hopping allows the wifi signal but also the bluetooth not to be polluted by interference.
Hedy Lamarr presented his invention to the US military, which initially refused it, before using it 20 years later on his torpedoes without telling the actress or paying her a single penny.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, all American warships were equipped with torpedoes that operated on the frequency hopping system.
A recluse end of life
At the end of her life, the actress never left her home, said to have failed cosmetic surgery operations.
She didn't want anyone to see her anymore.
She still received awards and honors for her invention.
Hedy Lamarr died in 2000 at the age of 85, as wifi was slowly taking hold in the world.