Quote:
Originally Posted by BigRedChief
Her life needs to be a movie. And just think she used spread spectrum in the early 40's. But we didn't see the further application of the tech until the 60's? Cause she was a movie star? A girl?
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Not entirely, but there may have been a small portion.
The initial application of spread spectrum as directly aimed at naval ordinance guidance. And when Hedy and her partner made their presentation to DoD, they phrased it as a 'player piano' roll for torpedos [to that point, torpedos were guided by wire]. It's an open question whether their work as dismissed for a bad presentation or due to her being a Hollywood beauty.
However, in a more explicit yet more ambiguous development, Hedy stopped working on spread spectrum when the Feds convinced her she could do more for the war effort as a starlet raising funds. She raised millions in War Bonds instead, so while it was pigeonholing, the position wasn't entirely without merit.
The subsequent development of spread spectrum for communications was for widely divergent applications than Hedy was concentrating on, but by that time, it was a post-war lull, she was comfortable in Hollywood, and corporations were developing her ideas [which she had gifted to the FedGov] without her input. The uses for spread spectrum that arose in the late 50s and early 60s had to wait on the development of other technologies independent of spread spectrum itself, and the urgency of ordinance guidance was much less in the post-war era.