Today marks what would have been this woman's 101st birthday. Hedy Lamarr was a Hollywood film actress and inventor. She was born in Austria and moved to the US where she became a naturalized citizen. She was coined as the most beautiful woman in the world by her agent, but behind great beauty there was also great smarts. Haley invented a better functioning traffic light and a tablet that dissolved in water to make it carbonated (this one didn't go well because even she thought it tasted like Alka Seltzer). Her most notable invention was created with George Antheil a composer. Together they developed spread spectrum technology in order to jam frequencies during the second world war and prevent our torpedoes from being jammed, frequency hopping. The US didn't use this technology until the 60's however. But it is now the basis for our GPS, WiFi, and mobile phones today. So as you peruse the Internet, and saddle on your smart phone, think of Hedy Lamarr and the work she did to get us here. #hedylamarr #nerdstatus #googledoodletoo