Viennese actress Hedy Lamarr got a notorious start to her acting career by appearing nude in the film Extase — in 1933. More to the point, Lamarr was an inventor.

Along with composer and amateur endocrinologist George Antheil, Lamarr created a system for torpedo guidance that would use signals broadcast over multiple radio frequencies, swapping (or “hopping”) from frequency to frequency.

They got a patent on the idea in 1942. The idea didn’t catch on immediately, most likely because Navy officials believed that the system would never fit on their planes. But in 1957, other engineers perfected the concept and put it into use. Lamarr died in 2000 after having been retired from public life for decades.

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