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Google Doodle celebrating the birthday of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000).
More inventor than actress but maybe that’s just my preference. Why didn’t I learn about the inventor part in school?
(Source: youtube.com)
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The labels in Alexander McQueen’s earliest garments contained a lock of hair, a nod to the way Victorian prostitutes would sell strands of their hair to be included in jewelry or given as gifts to lovers
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Graphene-based origami paper robots
Researchers from China reported in Science Advances that it has designed an ultrathin carbon-based paper (graphene oxide) that folds, walks, and even turns corners on its own.
Selected areas of the paper contract when heated with infrared light and swell back up again when the light is turned off. That allows the researchers to make paper strips that walk forward, backward, and turn when prompted by bursts of laser light. Down the road, such materials could prove valuable for making sensors able to detect humidity, light, and electric fields, as well as insectlike robots capable of carrying far more than their body weight.
See more in the video below:
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Hedy Lamarr starred in dozens of films throughout her impressive acting career, some of which are considered classics. But what many people may not know is that the Austrian actress made significant contributions toward wireless communication technology that are still used today.
While married to Friedrich Mandl, a fascist armaments manufacturer, Lamarr attended official meetings where military technologies were discussed with business partners. After ending her tumultuous marriage, she met her neighbor George Antheil, a composer and inventor. Using her knowledge of radio-controlled torpedoes acquired from the meetings she witnessed, Lamarr developed a frequency-hopping system with Antheil for Allied war efforts. Named the Secret Communications System, it rapidly switched random synchronized frequencies using a piano keyboard—88 frequencies, like 88 piano keys—and guided torpedoes away from their desired targets.
The system was never adopted by the military during World War II, but the technology was granted US Patent No. 2,292,387 and Lamarr and Antheil were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. The “Secret Communications System” is still used as the basis of modern spread-spectrum communication technology, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi.
Happy birthday, Hedy Lamarr!
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moma:
The first transistor radio was released 61 years ago today. Here’s Dieter Rams’s 1959 design for Braun, on view now in Making Music Modern: Design for Ear and Eye.
[Dieter Rams. Portable Transistor Radio and Phonograph (model TP 1). 1959. Braun AG, Frankfurt, Germany, est. 1921. The Museum of Modern Art, New York]
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