All Creative People Want To Do The Unexpected - Hedy Lamar

Hedy Lamarr once said: "Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid."

But this actress, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, was far from being stupid. In fact, quite the opposite.

Born in 1914, and an only child, Hedy Lamarr received all the time and love she needed from her parents. Her father, a highly cultured and curious person himself, cultivated in her a thirst for knowledge, and later in her life, Lamarr stated that she'd never love a man as much as she loved her father.

Lamarr began her acting career between both World Wars. But it wasn't until her fifth movie, Ecstasy (which has a slight Madame Bovary feel to it), that she rose to true international fame.  In it, and long before When Harry Met Sally, Hedy Lamarr simulates an orgasm. This caused the Vatican itself to condemn the movie...and everyone else to state that she was, in fact, the most beautiful woman in the world.

Her first husband, Friedrich Mandl, was a really big fan of hers. But he also turned out to be a fascist arms dealer,  who did business with Mussolini and Hitler. He was jealous, and possessive, and had her under lock and key at all times. Hedy Lamarr, not one to be tied down, decided then to take her destiny into her own hands--she drugged her guard, put his clothes on, and fled to the States, where she got a contract with Metro Goldwin Mayer.

She was an immediate success there as well, conquering hearts both on and off the screen.

But outside of Hollywood, Hedy Lamarr continued to entertain her passion for learning and discovery. And it's thanks to her friend and lover Howard Hughes, that she first got to explore this side of hers, designing sleeker and faster planes for him.

Concerned with events in Europe, and since she was familiar with weapons thanks to her first husband, Hedy Lamarr decided to team up with a friend, George Antheil, to develop a form of radio communication that would be difficult to jam. The idea being that these signals could be used to guide underwater missiles without them being detectable by the enemy (a technology known as Spread Spectrum).

And though they did get this invention patented, it's not until the Cold War that their technology was finally used and improved upon by the US on its missiles. Later, it became clear that their invention could have many other uses as well. It's therefore thanks to Hedy Lamarr that we now have technologies such as mobile phones, the GPS, military encryption, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.

It isn't until her last days (Hedy Lamarr died in 2000) that her genius was publicly recognized, and she received the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award.

In 2014, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

The world isn't getting any easier. With all these new inventions, I believe

that people are hurried more and pushed more... The hurried way

is not the right way; you need time for everything - 

time to work, time to play, time to rest.

~Hedy Lamarr