6 ms·
Hedy Lamarr (2018)
- nonrandomstring 3y agoFrequency hopping is no small idea to crack because you either need a shared codebook (PRNG) or a means of re-keying to an ephemeral window of future sequences. Didn't read Lamarr's patent but she seems a natural hacker girl taking music boxes apart aged 5.
- developer93 3y agoJust a hacker huh? Is a female hacker different than a male one?
- HL33tibCe7 3y agoLike many stories of this kind, the idea that this person "pioneered the basis" of these technologies seems massively overblown. What she and Antheil patented was a system that used frequency hopping to help guide torpedoes, using a piano roll to switch between the frequencies. They did not "invent" frequency hopping, which had been discussed in the literature for 30 years already.
- nonrandomstring 3y agoBut a piano-roll (presumably of type she discovered in music boxes) is quite ingenious solution for synchronised key sequences, for the technology of the time. Kinda similar analogical transfer going on for the Jacquard loom as early "program storage".
- shakow 3y agoI don't think OP says that her work was not smart or non-innovative, merely that presenting it as “pioneering frequency hoping” is over the top. E.g. Hoare did a lot of smart things with Rust bringing real-world impact, still you wouldn't write on his epitaph that he “pioneered programming languages”.
- localplume 3y agoexactly. every single one of these cases is an absolute stretch and diminishes the work of the people who actually developed it. its historical revisionism at best at worst its offensive to the person because it suggests they were so small minded that they didn't or couldn't actually develop the technology to a sufficient enough degree such that they are actually associated with it. these people are hidden not because they're women, but because they didn't really contribute anything at all to the field
- anonym29 3y ago[flagged]
- brookst 3y ago[flagged]
- zmgsabst 3y ago“Pinkwashing” is garden variety bigoted myth making. And it hurts both men and women — as bigotry tends to do.
- flangola7 3y ago[flagged]
- jwkpiano1 3y agoExcept this was an actual real accomplishment, whose out of patent idea was used later by the Navy: https://physicsworld.com/a/a-tale-of-two-lives/ https://physicsworld.com/a/a-tale-of-two-lives/. The application was indeed original, as evidenced by the receipt of a patent for it. You can argue with how the work is described here, but trying to claim it wasn’t a real accomplishment or is somehow comparable to someone adding a bunch of consts is absurd.
- HL33tibCe7 3y agoIt was a real accomplishment, no doubt, but it's not an accomplishment of the order that the article claims.
- fortran77 3y agoAnd the spread spectrum as used in modern devices is not frequency hopping.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoCould you explain what it is, then, and how it differs from frequency hopping?
- fortran77 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I-Qbc_inIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I-Qbc_inIc
- w7b7s7 3y agoYes, this is one of my favorite articles discussing the early patents dealing with frequency hopping and spread spectrum. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/random-paths-to-frequency-hopping https://www.americanscientist.org/article/random-paths-to-fr...
- bnralt 3y agoLooking at the early Wikipedia pages is fairly telling. From the first day that her page is up, Hedy Lamarr had a large section devoted to this invention[1]. But her co-inventor's Wikipedia only made a brief mention of it for the first several years[2]. It seems clear that people were interested in exaggerating her contributions in particular. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hedy_Lamarr&oldid=750266 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hedy_Lamarr&oldid... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Antheil&oldid=95688450 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Antheil&ol...
- gsich 3y agoWlan is not using frequency hopping or am I mistaken?
- _joel 3y agoYes, otherwise interference would be a right pain (or render it unusable completely). This happens for many wireless systems (like bluetooth too).
- BenjiWiebe 3y agoBluetooth uses frequency hopping. WiFi and GPS do not.
- evgen 3y agoNo, but an early wireless midpoint between nascent wifi deployments and really shitty WAP in a world before data over cellular networks was Ricochet Networks. Frequency hopping over the public bands of the era (900MHz mostly I think) it was able to give decent wireless internet in the mid 90s to those of us living in supported areas of Silicon Valley. When laptops were a new thing and public wifi still years away it was fun ‘work remote’ in some corner of a coffeeshop when everyone else was chained to office desktops.
- tgv 3y agoUnfortunately, mother of a shitty predecessor of wifi doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
- epcoa 3y agoIt was, briefly. Long before Wi-Fi was a household name when 802.11 (no b) was just standardized for industrial use there was an FHSS PHY. I think Proxim or one of the other defunct industrial data capture companies sold it into the 2000s. In any case there’s a lot of overlapping commonality in the information theory and engineering of frequency hopping and more modern SS.
- mellosouls 3y agoNote that this "Austrian-American actress" (I understand the helpful wording is aimed at non-buffs who may not recognise the name Hedy Lamarr) was a huge star in her day, an equivalent to - say - Margot Robbie.
- rurban 3y agoBigger than Robbie, much bigger
- MrScruff 3y agoYeah, I know more about Hedy Lamarr than I do about Margot Robbie even though she was at the peak of her career 40 years before I was born.
- shellac 3y agoGot her own joke name in Blazing Saddles. No greater honour.
- blipvert 3y agoAnd, in her gratitude, sued Mel Brooks for $10m!
- IndySun 3y ago"What the hell are you worried about? This is 1874. You'll be able to sue her!"
- kadoban 3y agoDid she really? That's pretty hilarious tbh...
- satori99 3y agoShe did indeed. Brooks didn't even fight it. He just paid because he admired her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEQ3OxYL2Co https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEQ3OxYL2Co
- Brajeshwar 3y agoEven though I had stumbled/read about Hedy Lamarr earlier, the book "How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World"[1] by Steven Johnson was the one that got me to read it in detail. The book is exciting and would definitely be one of my casual reading suggestions. 1. https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-Innovations/dp/1594633932 https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-Innovations/dp/1594633...
- tgv 3y agoWeird choices. Clean water is not really on par with the phonograph.
- malermeister 3y ago[flagged]
- YoshiRulz 3y agoTIL Kleiner's pet headcrab in HL2 is named after an inventor. I don't much care for the "great man" (great woman in this case) view of history, but this is a good story.
- pomian 3y agoHedy's Folly, by Richard Rhodes. It's a very good book about Hedy Lamar's life and her fame, and work on that patent. It's interesting that the book is not mentioned. The author is the same one that wrote the Making of the Atomic Bomb, which I believe the movie Oppenheimer, was based on. All of his books are very interesting, revealing many of the intricacies, that took place in recent history, making the world we live in today.
- c0pium 3y agoOppenheimer was based on “American Prometheus”, thus all the Prometheus references.
- kippinitreal 3y agoTrue - but Richard Rhodes (author of Hedys Folley) was an advisor to Nolan for the film and I imagine his books on atomic history were very helpful.
- peoplefromibiza 3y agoShe surely was a brilliant mind, but calling her "the mother of Wi-Fi" is IMO a bit disingenuous, it is like calling Becquerel "the father of the nuclear reactor" because he accidentally discovered spontaneous radioactivity.
- peoplefromibiza 3y agocannot edit anymore, but after reading dang's comment, I wish to emphatise that "mother of the Wi-Fi" is a reference to the article content and not the title. Specifically Such achievement has led Lamarr to be dubbed “the mother of Wi-Fi” and other wireless communications like GPS and Bluetooth.
- peoplefromibiza 3y agoAlso, @dang, it's fascinating that a streak of downvotes on a recent comment percolated on these two comments with the same exact magnitude and at the same time, on a thread that has no more traction. how interesting... especially this one, I see no reason why it went from +2 to 0 at the same time that the parent went from +7 to +5 since it doesn't say anything controversial or offensive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37636480 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37636480 It would be great if people could se who downvoted them
- djoletina 3y agoSerious question, how is she “-American”, she lived and worked in the States in the later part of her life, but her roots aren’t American?
- hackyhacky 3y agoShe became a US citizen in 1953. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr
- djoletina 3y agoShe got US citizenship, this doesn’t/shouldn’t make her an Austrian-American actress since that implies that she has American roots.
- hackyhacky 3y agoYou're entitled to your opinion, but the use of the "-American" suffix here is consistent with how it is often used for immigrants, e.g. a Chinese person who immigrates to the US could be described as Chinese-American. Or just American. The demonym can reflect both ethnicity and citizenship. Identity is complicated. Moreover, I don't even know what you mean by "roots." The US is a country of immigrants. What qualifies as having "American roots" in your view?
- djoletina 3y agoI mean might be wrong to ask this question in a US based forum as you’re mostly going to be biased, but the reality is she is an Austrian that lived in the US. I feel like the hyphen changes her identity which she might not have agreed with. Well you used a word that is crucial imho, roots, means where you come from, origins. I feel like I tend to have libertarian views regarding choosing your identity, which includes calling yourself American, Austrian or whatever, ultimately it’s you that should make this decision. But just adding hyphens to people with historical significance that decided to move to a country that at the time gave them an economic incentive by having the best market feels dirty. Especially considering that most other countries don’t do this.
- motohagiography 3y agoThe story of Hedy Lamar was an amazing piece of hacker lore to discover before the web when culture was mostly confined to paper and scarce. I often think makers form a parallel culture with its own thread of history. Hacker history like this shows that breakthrough technology is the effect of individual minds and desire.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- coldtea 3y ago[flagged]
- kvandy 3y agoHarrumph!
- dang 3y agoThe submitted title ("An Austrian-American actress/inventor pioneered basis for WiFi, GPS, & Bluetooth") was highly editorialized, which breaks the HN guideline: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Submitters: please don't do that. It skews discussion in unhelpful ways—and particularly did so in this case. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- noteflakes 3y ago[flagged]