중학교 영어 3 (미래엔 최연희) 연계 글

Hedy Lamarr was born in Vienna, Austria, and she was curious about machines from an early age. As a young child, she once took apart her music box to see how it worked and then put it back together.

Lamarr later moved to the United States and became a famous film actor. However, acting was not the only work that she loved. She had never trained as an engineer, but she spent her free time drawing plans for new inventions. On the film set, she worked on her ideas in the trailer where she waited between scenes. At home, she kept a special table where she continued this work at night.

In World War II, ships could guide some torpedoes by radio. This method had one weakness: if enemies discovered the frequency of the signal, they could block it. Lamarr's answer was to keep the signal jumping from one frequency to another. Therefore, enemies would have no way to know which frequency to block. Today, this method is known as frequency hopping.

In 1940, Lamarr met George Antheil, a composer who knew a great deal about player pianos. The ship and the torpedo had to change frequencies at exactly the same moment; therefore, both needed to follow the same pattern. Antheil suggested a pair of matching paper rolls like the ones in a player piano. They planned to place one roll on the ship where the signal began and the other inside the torpedo. According to their patent, such a roll could control 88 frequencies—the same as the number of keys on a piano.

In August 1942, the two inventors received United States Patent 2,292,387 for a "Secret Communication System." However, the United States Navy did not use their system during the war. Lamarr did not let this stop her; she remained passionate about inventing throughout her life.

For many years, her work as an inventor received little attention. In 1997, the Electronic Frontier Foundation honored Lamarr and Antheil with its Pioneer Award. Lamarr died in 2000, and in 2014, her name was added to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Today, experts see her idea as an important step in the history of wireless communication.