Hedy Lamarr-Inventor,
A sultry screen star who didn't just act _ she invented
By ELIZABETH WEISE=
AP Cyberspace Writer=

	   The next time you pick up a cellular phone, give a brief thought
to the improbable woman who first patented some of its underlying
technology 55 years ago _ ``the most beautiful girl in the world,''
actress Hedy Lamarr. 

	   The sultry, sophisticated brunette star of such hits as ``Samson
and Delilah'' was the racy stuff of dreams for hundreds of thousands of
men who marched off to war. 

	   But there's another side to this pinup image. The pouting,
sensuous star had an inquiring intellect and an engineering bent that in
another era might have taken her not to Hollywood, but to MIT. 

	   And though she never received an Oscar for her acting, she is
about to get an award from the nation's techno-wizards, who have adopted
her as one of their own. 

	   To trace the story of Lamarr's invention, it's necessary to hark
back to 1933, when the Vienna-born 19-year-old _ already famous for her
sexy film ``Ecstasy'' _ became the trophy wife of Austrian armament
manufacturer Fritz Mandl in a marriage arranged by her parents. 

	   ``I was a kind of slave. When we were in Italy, I couldn't even go
swimming without him being there,'' she said in a phone interview with the
Associated Press, the first interview she has granted in 20 years. 

	   Mandl kept her by his side as he attended hundreds of dinners and
meetings with arms developers, builders and buyers. But the young Lamarr
didn't just play the role of gracious hostess, she also listened and
learned. 

	   After four years of marriage, with Mandl increasingly involved in
deals with the Nazis, Lamarr knew she must escape. She drugged the maid
assigned to guard her, crawled out a window and made her way to London. 

	   There, she appeared on the stage, which led MGM's Louis B. Mayer
to offer her a shot in Hollywood _ where she got a movie contract, a new
name (she was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) and a new language. 

	   But she didn't forget the immersion course she'd been given in
advanced weaponry at the side of the first of her six husbands. Filled
with an abiding hatred of the Nazis and a strong sense of patriotism for
her adopted country, she searched for ways to help the war effort. 

	   In 1941, she met composer George Antheil at a Hollywood party.
Dubbed ``the bad boy of music,'' Antheil composed avant-garde, mechanistic
symphonies and ballets. 

	   ``Hedy didn't suffer fools gladly. George Antheil was not only a
musician, but a formidable enough intellect that she could hold an
intelligent conversation with him,'' said Dave Hughes, a Colorado
researcher whose work for the National Science Foundation on wireless
communication is based in part on the technology Lamarr envisioned more
than a half-century ago. 

	   Lamarr wanted to work at the newly established National Inventors
Council in Washington, D.C., but was told she could do more for the fight
against the Nazis by using her star status to sell war bonds. 

	   But that wasn't enough for her. An intuitive tinkerer, Lamarr said
she has always been ``interested in everything.''

	   ``When I was a little girl, just four years old, I remember my
father had a gold watch. And I asked ``Why does this in front go around,
how does this work?'' she remembered. 

	   Even in the midst of the glitter and pomp of Hollywood, she was
full of ideas, including one on the radio control of torpedoes. She'd sat
with Mandl as he reviewed films of field tests on torpedo systems, and now
her mind began to explore ways to circumvent the jamming that kept the
United States from using radio-controlled missiles against the Germans. 

	   As one of her sons, Anthony Loder, recalls, she and Antheil ``were
sitting at the piano one day and he was hitting some keys and she was
following him, and she said `Hey, look, we're talking to each other and
we're changing all the time.' ''

	   Fired up with the possibilities, they set to work the next day. 

	   ``We were sitting on the floor figuring the whole thing out,'' she
said from her home in Florida. 

	   A simple radio signal sent to control a torpedo was too easy to
block.  But what if the signal hopped from frequency to frequency at
split-second intervals? Anyone trying to listen in or jam it would hear
only random noise, like a radio dial being spun. But if both the sender
and the receiver where hopping in synch, the message would come through
loud and clear. 

	   The idea was Lamarr's, but Antheil, whose compositions had
featured up to 14 player pianos playing simultaneously, suggested using
piano rolls to make sure both sides were in synch. 

	   Their patent for a ``Secret Communication System'' was granted on
Aug.  11, 1942. 

	   ``I read the patent,'' said Franklin Antonio, chief technical
officer of the cellular phone maker Qualcomm Inc. of San Diego. ``You
don't usually think of movie stars having brains, but she sure did.''

	   In fact, it was a brilliant idea _ so brilliant that it was years
ahead of its time. 

	   ``I always am,'' she said. 

	   In fact, the Navy declared Antheil's notion of using a clockwork
mechanism controlled by paper tape too cumbersome to be implemented. It
would take another 20 years, and the invention of the transistor, for the
concept to be realized. Three years after the patent expired, the pair's
ideas were used in secure military communication systems installed on U.S. 
ships sent to blockade Cuba in 1962. 

	   But it was with the widespread availability of fast, cheap and
small computer chips that spread spectrum really came into its own. It's
still used by the military, including the U.S. government's Milstar
defense communications satellite system, as well as for wireless Internet
transmission and in many of the newer cellular phones. 

	   By an odd twist of fate, Lamarr's son Anthony owns a Los
Angeles-based phone store. 

	   ``It's in every other phone system I sell,'' he said. 

	   Anthony Loder has written a screenplay about what he sees as his
mother's essentially tragic life. Neither she nor Antheil ever received
royalty payments for the commercialization of their patent, though it is
cited as the underlying patent for frequency-changing technology. Now 84 _
by most accounts, although she says she is 82 _ she lives simply and in
seclusion. 

	   ``She's been forgotten. But she contributed so much to an older
generation. A lot of men fell in love with her. And now the younger
generation is benefiting from the unknown creative work that she did,''
her son said. 

	   But some of those men who fell in love with her looks turned into
the men who also would make use of her ideas _ and fight to get her the
recognition they felt she deserved. 

	   Robert Price, an electrical engineer in Lexington, Mass., tried
twice in the early 1980s _ first with a unsuccessful proposal for an award
from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and then with
a failed attempt to get her a Medal of Honor from Congress. 

	   Next came Hughes, who champions the cause of a wireless Internet
using the very spread spectrum Lamarr envisioned, is taking up the
challenge. 

	   ``I was a 15-year-old fussing around with a crystal radio set just
trying to get a signal in 1941 and, here she was, intellectually
articulating a control mechanism for torpedo guidance systems!'' he said. 

	   He launched a campaign to get Lamarr and Antheil honored with an
award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The cause was taken up by
engineers who remembered her not just from her salad days in Hollywood,
but by her name on an important patent. The EFF was inundated with a
blizzard of e-mail seconds for the nomination. 

	   So on Wednesday, Lamarr and Antheil will be honored with an award
for ``blazing new trails on the electronic frontier'' at the Computers,
Freedom and Privacy conference in San Francisco. Her son will accept it on
her behalf. 

	   Lamarr still doesn't suffer fools gladly. Informed of the award,
her reaction was blunt. 

	   ``It's about time.''