Most know Hedy Lamarr for her work as an actress on the silver screen. Once cited as the most beautiful woman in the world, she starred in such films as Samson and Delilah, Algiers and Ziegfeld Girl.
However, Lamarr was a lot more than just another pretty Hollywood face. She also possessed a brilliant mind, and along with composer George Antheil, she developed radio frequency hopping during World War II after identifying how German submarines jammed communications against the Allies. This technology eventually led to the invention of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.
"Any girl can be glamorous," said Lamarr once, according to her estate's website. "All you have to do is stand still and look stupid."
Lamarr was anything but stupid, and although she passed away in 2000 at the age of 85, today marks what would have been her 101st birthday. Google decided to honor Lamarr's accomplishments, both in film and in technology with a Google Doodle.
Google has recently made strides in honoring more women with its Doodles, with Lamarr being the latest example.
"It's no wonder, then, that Lamarr has kind of a mythical status at Google, and I was pretty excited at the chance to tell her story in Doodle form," wrote Doodler Jennifer Horn on Google's blog. "This took some tinkering of my own — after deciding on the movie format as a nod to her Hollywood career, I dug through old fashion illustrations and movie posters to try to capture the look and feel of the 1940s. Sketching storyboards on a yellow notepad helped me figure out how to show Lamarr in very different scenarios — movie star by day, inventor by night — which we then animated and set to the awesome soundtrack created by composer Adam Ever-Hadani."
Although Lamarr received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, her work in technology did not get recognized until the 1990s, when she and fellow inventor Antheil received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award. The two received an induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.
On an interesting side-note, Lamarr had no background in science or technology, although she studied languages, ballet and piano as a child. Lamarr also later believed that technology only made modern life more complicated.
"The world isn't getting any easier," once said Lamarr. "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."
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