Hedy Lamarr was many things in a world that wanted to limit her to just one: bombshell. And while she was renowned in her time as one of Hollywood’s leading film stars — once even dubbed “the most beautiful woman in the world” — Ms. Lamarr was also a brilliant inventor, an “armchair engineer" without any formal training but possessing an original mind for mechanics.
In other words, she was a great thinker.
Lamarr’s patented invention of Spread Spectrum Technology — which she created as a solution to enable secret communication during WWII — would go unrecognized by the scientific community for decades, although the technology was used without her knowledge by the government after the patent had expired. Her pioneering invention has enabled so many technologies that make up our modern world: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS, to name a few.
And though Lamarr was largely unacknowledged during her time for her innovation, still, she persisted. She saw her invention and vision through as best she could, while she struggled to create a life for herself in a world that could not see her for who she really was.
In these paradoxical times of ours when it can seem we are still too living in a world, in societies, in communities, or in families that can not, that will not accept us for all that we are, let us keep in mind these commandments by Dr. Kent M. Keith... spoken powerfully below by a brilliant woman, who refused not to dim her light.
