A Movie Star and a Composer invented WIFI in 1942? episode artwork

EPISODE · Feb 10, 2026 · 45 MIN

A Movie Star and a Composer invented WIFI in 1942?

from History Pondered and Explored · host History Pondered

The movie star, Hedy Lamarr, once called the most beautiful woman in the world and the composer- the self-titled Bad Boy of Music, George Antheil, did indeed come up with the foundational idea, encoded frequency hopping, now called spread spectrum, from which innovations such as WIFI, Bluetooth and GPS were developed.Believe it or not, the coding and methods similar to encryption were developed by the pair using piano player paper rolls.A player piano is one in which, using the coded rolls, plays itself.Sounds implausible, sounds like a myth, but it is all true

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Feb 10, 2026

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A Movie Star and a Composer invented WIFI in 1942?

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