It’s the birthday of Hedy Lamarr, actress and inventor of the spread-spectrum communication tech behind Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS, born #OnThisDay in 1914 bit.ly/36eg2hW 
Born in Vienna, Austria, her father inspired her to look at the world with open eyes and often discussed the inner-workings of different machines with her. At age 5, she could be found taking apart and reassembling her music box to understand how it operated.
Her mother introduced her to the arts, and she went on to study acting before becoming a famous Hollywood actress. She nurtured her scientific mind by tinkering in her trailer between takes, sketching a new wing design for airplanes, and creating an upgraded stoplight.
Together with George Antheil, she patented a secret communication system in 1942 that could guide torpedoes using “frequency-hopping” technology — the tech later became the basis of wireless communication.
Following her death in 2000, Hedy was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014 and has since become known as the “mother of Wi-Fi.” #WomenInSTEM
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