IDEA No 27
WIFI
In 1933, the most popular film was King Kong, but the most talked about was Ecstasy, a Czechoslovakian film featuring the first onscreen orgasm. Its leading lady went on to invent the technology that underpins WiFi.
‘Immaterials: Light painting WiFi’ by Timo Arnall, Jørn Knutsen and Einar Sneve Martinussen at the Oslo School of Architecture & Design explores the invisible terrain of WiFi networks by light-painting signal strength in long-exposure photographs.
Following her performance in Ecstasy, Hedy Kiestler married the arms dealer, Friedrich Mandl, the richest man in Austria. Mandl took his beautiful wife to business meetings to impress his clients – senior officials of the German and Italian fascist governments. A recurring subject of conversation was how to stop the enemy from jamming the signal of radio-guided torpedoes. Whoever managed such a feat would control the seas. Jewish-born Hedy, with a secret love of science, quietly set her mind to coming up with the solution.
In 1937, tired of her domineering husband, Hedy fled to Hollywood. She changed her name to Hedy Lamarr and forged a hugely successful acting career. Alongside Victor Mature, she was the star of the box-office smash, Samson and Delilah. During this period she visited the eccentric composer George Antheil for advice about improving her figure. Somehow, torpedoes came up. Hedy told him about her idea for a radio signal that hopped frequencies. Antheil suggested that a hole-punched ribbon, similar to the paper roll in a player piano, could advise the transmitter and receiver of the changing frequencies. A year later, in 1941, they registered a patent for a ‘secret communication system’ that constantly switched frequency.
Thirty years later, in 1971, at the University of Hawaii, a computer network was created based on this technology. Called ALOHAnet, it used radio signals to connect computers across the Hawaiian Islands. A dedicated radio frequency would mean only one message could be sent at once. By spreading the signal across the spectrum, several computers could communicate simultaneously without interfering with one another. It was the world’s first wireless network.
The term WiFi was coined by Interbrand in 1999, and we have not looked back since. Liberated from our desks, we use WiFi to surf the Web, send email, find our location and make phone calls. Wireless networking has taken the Web mobile.
The next time you make a call or use a WiFi network, say a quiet thank you to a beautiful actress with a head for numbers.■
Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr, inventor of frequency-hopping spread spectrum radio, the technology that underpins WiFi.