Hedy Lamarr was born in Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, Austria. By the time she was a teenager, she had decided to drop out of school and seek fame as an actress. She first appeared in a German film in 1930. She was attractive and talented enough to be in three more films "Ecstasy"(搖頭丸； 入迷，狂喜） that brought her worldwide fame as an actress. In 1937 she fled from her country and secretly moved to Hollywood, where she reinvented（重塑） herself. She changed her name to Hedy Lamarr, with the nickname"The Most Beautiful Woman in Films". However, Lamarr defied the leading-lady stereotype（刻板印象） by also pursuing an interest in mathematics and engineering. She soon took up（開(kāi)始） inventing. Her earliest inventions included an improved traffic stoplight and a tablet （藥片）that would dissolve in water or create a carbonated （含二氧化碳的）drink.
With the ongoing World War, Lamarr was inspired to contribute to the war effort. She designed a radio guidance system（無(wú)線電制導(dǎo)系統(tǒng)） for torpedoes（魚(yú)雷）. With the help of composer（作曲家） George Antheil, whom she met in 1940, she discovered a way to break up signals（分解信號(hào)） and transmit（傳輸） them over different frequencies（頻率）. Using a method similar to the way player pianos work, they designed a frequency-hopping system （跳頻系統(tǒng)）that would continually change the radio signals sent to a torpedo. While others, including Nikola Tesla, had explored similar ideas of frequency hopping, Larmarr and Antheil obtained a patent （專利）for their invention in 1942 for what would become known as spread-spectrum technology.（擴(kuò)頻技術(shù)）
Although the U.S. Navy did not adopt the technology during the war, it was used during the Cuban Missile Crisis（古巴導(dǎo)彈危機(jī)） in 1962. For decades Lamarr's technology remained behind the scenes（幕后）, but ultimately（最后） it led to the creation of today's spread-spectrum communication technology, such as Wi-Fi networks, mobile phones, GPS and Bluetooth technologies.
Lamarr and Antheil eventually received several awards for their lifetime creative achievements that contributed so much to society. They were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame（美國(guó)發(fā)明家名人堂） in 2014, after her death in 2000
