Showing posts with label Wi-Fi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wi-Fi. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

What famous Golden Age Hollywood actress holds an underlying patent for Wi-Fi technology?

Hedy LamarrImage via Wikipedia
Wi-Fi technology is one the lynchpins of the modern computing age (especially for those poor iPhone users trying to eek out data consumption on AT&T's crippled cell network). Still, like all modern tech, Wi-Fi was built on the technical specifications that came before it -- many of which arrived via unlikely or unnoticed contributors.

Take, for example, basic spread-spectrum frequency hopping, the process by which radio signals are varied to ensure that no passing form of interference or jamming can subvert the transmission. The concept goes back at least as far as Nikola Tesla who patented a remote control torpedo in 1898. Tesla, however, is not the only famous name to hold an underlying patent for Wi-Fi technology. Modern Wi-Fi tech owes its existence in part to performer with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

What famous Golden Age Hollywood actress holds an underlying patent for Wi-Fi technology?