The submitted title ("An Austrian-American actress/inventor pioneered basis for WiFi, GPS, & Bluetooth") was highly editorialized, which breaks the HN guideline: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Submitters: please don't do that. It skews discussion in unhelpful ways—and particularly did so in this case. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Hedy's Folly, by Richard Rhodes. It's a very good book about Hedy Lamar's life and her fame, and work on that patent.
It's interesting that the book is not mentioned.
The author is the same one that wrote the Making of the Atomic Bomb, which I believe the movie Oppenheimer, was based on. All of his books are very interesting, revealing many of the intricacies, that took place in recent history, making the world we live in today.
Frequency hopping is no small idea to crack because you either need a
shared codebook (PRNG) or a means of re-keying to an ephemeral window
of future sequences. Didn't read Lamarr's patent but she seems a
natural hacker girl taking music boxes apart aged 5.
TIL Kleiner's pet headcrab in HL2 is named after an inventor. I don't much care for the "great man" (great woman in this case) view of history, but this is a good story.
She surely was a brilliant mind, but calling her "the mother of Wi-Fi" is IMO a bit disingenuous, it is like calling Becquerel "the father of the nuclear reactor" because he accidentally discovered spontaneous radioactivity.
Also, @dang, it's fascinating that a streak of downvotes on a recent comment percolated on these two comments with the same exact magnitude and at the same time, on a thread that has no more traction.
how interesting...
especially this one, I see no reason why it went from +2 to 0 at the same time that the parent went from +7 to +5 since it doesn't say anything controversial or offensive
cannot edit anymore, but after reading dang's comment, I wish to emphatise that "mother of the Wi-Fi" is a reference to the article content and not the title.
Specifically
Such achievement has led Lamarr to be dubbed “the mother of Wi-Fi” and other wireless communications like GPS and Bluetooth.
Even though I had stumbled/read about Hedy Lamarr earlier, the book "How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World"[1] by Steven Johnson was the one that got me to read it in detail. The book is exciting and would definitely be one of my casual reading suggestions.
It was, briefly. Long before Wi-Fi was a household name when 802.11 (no b) was just standardized for industrial use there was an FHSS PHY. I think Proxim or one of the other defunct industrial data capture companies sold it into the 2000s.
In any case there’s a lot of overlapping commonality in the information theory and engineering of frequency hopping and more modern SS.
No, but an early wireless midpoint between nascent wifi deployments and really shitty WAP in a world before data over cellular networks was Ricochet Networks. Frequency hopping over the public bands of the era (900MHz mostly I think) it was able to give decent wireless internet in the mid 90s to those of us living in supported areas of Silicon Valley. When laptops were a new thing and public wifi still years away it was fun ‘work remote’ in some corner of a coffeeshop when everyone else was chained to office desktops.
The story of Hedy Lamar was an amazing piece of hacker lore to discover before the web when culture was mostly confined to paper and scarce. I often think makers form a parallel culture with its own thread of history. Hacker history like this shows that breakthrough technology is the effect of individual minds and desire.
Like many stories of this kind, the idea that this person "pioneered the basis" of these technologies seems massively overblown. What she and Antheil patented was a system that used frequency hopping to help guide torpedoes, using a piano roll to switch between the frequencies. They did not "invent" frequency hopping, which had been discussed in the literature for 30 years already.
But a piano-roll (presumably of type she discovered in music boxes) is
quite ingenious solution for synchronised key sequences, for the
technology of the time. Kinda similar analogical transfer going on for
the Jacquard loom as early "program storage".
I don't think OP says that her work was not smart or non-innovative, merely that presenting it as “pioneering frequency hoping” is over the top.
E.g. Hoare did a lot of smart things with Rust bringing real-world impact, still you wouldn't write on his epitaph that he “pioneered programming languages”.
exactly. every single one of these cases is an absolute stretch and diminishes the work of the people who actually developed it. its historical revisionism at best
at worst its offensive to the person because it suggests they were so small minded that they didn't or couldn't actually develop the technology to a sufficient enough degree such that they are actually associated with it. these people are hidden not because they're women, but because they didn't really contribute anything at all to the field
You can't take HN threads into gender war, or any ideological flamewar, like this. The way you crossed into personal attack is particularly ugly. We ban accounts that post like this, so please don't post like this again.
> I know several extremely competent women in technical roles - like, better than 99% of others in their field regardless of gender. None of them EVER self-refer as "women in tech", or "women who code".
FWIW, I know some excellent engineers, technologists, professors, etc. who are women, and who also participate in programs to address sexism.
We have a long history of really stupid and unjust sexism, and that's a lot to dig out of. Different people tackle that different ways.
Sometimes I hear of approaches that I don't understand. If I tried to make snap judgments of them, I'd hope I'd usually be right, but I suspect I'd often be wrong.
In general, I think I'm best off focusing on support of things that seem positive.
The man who "wrote" the code disagrees with your take on Katie Bouman:
"While I wrote much of the code for one of these pipelines, Katie was a huge contributor to the software; it would have never worked without her contributions and the work of many others who wrote code, debugged, and figured out how to use the code on challenging EHT data."
Btw lines of code != amount of contribution, sad to see this kind of take on a supposedly programmer focused site.
Except this was an actual real accomplishment, whose out of patent idea was used later by the Navy: https://physicsworld.com/a/a-tale-of-two-lives/. The application was indeed original, as evidenced by the receipt of a patent for it. You can argue with how the work is described here, but trying to claim it wasn’t a real accomplishment or is somehow comparable to someone adding a bunch of consts is absurd.
There is no proof that the Patent Office ever issued a secrecy order regarding her patent during WW2.
One small detail, but there are large numbers of 'small' details with her story that add up to Lamarr's frequency hopping patent not being remotely what is being claimed it is now (foundation or inspiration of many future inventions), nor having wide ranging effects.
Independently thinking up her scheme was very impressive in itself. She was a very talented person.
I used to acknowledge, but, I've gotten bitter, I've been hearing about Hedy since I joined reddit. which was years ago, and I don't even care about frequency hopping, I can only be forcefully swallowed propaganda for so long until I start actively working against the subject no matter what it is.
> I know several extremely competent women in technical roles - like, better than 99% of others in their field regardless of gender. None of them EVER self-refer as "women in tech", or "women who code".
Another thing I find uncomfortable about this kind of "pinkwashing" is that it papers over the actual reality of history, which is that (with a very small number of exceptions) women simply didn't get get the opportunity to be "pioneers" in technology, because of the incredibly unfair nature of society at the time. In a fairer society, someone like Lamarr, who was clearly extremely intelligent and curious, might well have gone on to be a pioneer. But that wasn't the reality at the time - and we should acknowledge that.
> women simply didn't get get the opportunity to be "pioneers"
It is bigger than that.
Virtually no one had that opportunity.
Lamarr was lucky enough to be part of a very small élite where "her father was deputy director of Wiener Bankverein, and in the end of his life a director at the united Creditanstalt-Bankverein. Her mother, a pianist and a native of Budapest, had come from an upper-class Hungarian-Jewish family.". She had a lot more opportunities than most of her contemporaries.
This isn't the latest example of anything. Hedy Lamarr's interests were the subject of podcasts over a decade ago, and books long before that.
This isn't a good example of pinkwashing. There's no harm in recognizing the efforts of the underdog. We valorize Nikola Tesla despite him living and dying as a failure.
Terry Davis too. Nobody needed TempleOS, but we're proud for him for trying.
I agree that to put someone on a pedestal simply by dint of their
gender, race or sexuality does a disservice to that group. Would love
to see a version of this story in which her "just happening to be a
fabulously beautiful film star" is a marginal remark.
But isn't it the same when we lionise sociopathic, charismatic men [0]
who "never cared about norms" but end up enshitifying the world with
their reckless engineering and cocaine addled moral ambivalence?
As a "man in tech who eschews the norms" I'm a little uncomfortable
that my fellow computer scientists might hold up Hank Asher as an
example of anything but a criminal whose mindset is the exemplar of
everything we should seek not to be as ethical hackers.
Is there a double standard when a woman with talent, charm and beauty
is seen to succeed _despite_ those qualities, whereas a man who is a
"lovable rogue" is claimed to succeed because of them?
> But isn't it the same when we lionise sociopathic, charismatic men
Yes.
Steve Jobs myth is completely overblown.
Elon Musk is far from being a great entrepreneur, on the contrary he's a malevolent reactionary who's greater achievement is making people believe that a company that profits from selling carbon credits is a car company or a tech company or a software company or a battery company, depending on who you ask.
Jeff Bezos normalized new more subtle forms of exploitation of US workforce.
> But isn't it the same when we lionise sociopathic, charismatic men [0] who "never cared about norms"
who is this "we" are you referring to? to me, assholes are assholes. be it a man, woman, it, or anything in between. especially if this person works in adtech and adjacent industry.
> my fellow computer scientists might hold up Hank Asher as an example of anything but a criminal
seems like a problem with your education system. I think there's this thing called ethics, not sure if they teach it there.
> seems like a problem with your education system. I think there's
> this thing called ethics, not sure if they teach it there.
Absolutely correct. There's an awful, awful problem with our education
system (I am from the UK). It is in ruins, completely unfit for
purpose in a modern technological society.
As for ethics, you're right, we absolutely don't teach it. Worse, we
actively downplay or avoid it. I speak from experience of witnessing
that first hand.
The result: a cult of personality, self-aggrandisement, conquest,
kleptomania, and domination passed-off as "business".
I absolutely agree that education has lost its way. Do please read my
piece about it in the Times HE next week.
You see the same thing with inventions falsely attributed to African Americans, like peanut butter and the traffic light, while actual awesome inventions by African Americans (like the super soaker) often get ignored. Or the video game cartridge is a good example. Jerry Lawson didn't invent it, but his other impressive engineering work gets ignored and instead a lie gets spread.
Looking at the early Wikipedia pages is fairly telling. From the first day that her page is up, Hedy Lamarr had a large section devoted to this invention[1]. But her co-inventor's Wikipedia only made a brief mention of it for the first several years[2]. It seems clear that people were interested in exaggerating her contributions in particular.
Note that this "Austrian-American actress" (I understand the helpful wording is aimed at non-buffs who may not recognise the name Hedy Lamarr) was a huge star in her day, an equivalent to - say - Margot Robbie.
She actually sued us for using Hedley Lamarr. Too close to Hedy. And they said, ‘This is ridiculous, we’ll go to court, we’ll fight it.’ And I said, ‘No! She’s beautiful. See if you can get a meeting.’”
Brooks continued, “I read something about, you know, department store, embarrassment. ‘Give her within reason, pay her. Give her whatever she needs.’ ’You know, because, she’s given us so much wonderful cinematic pleasure for forty years. I think it’s incumbent on us to salute her is some, anyway we can. And send her my love and tell her where I live.’”
You're entitled to your opinion, but the use of the "-American" suffix here is consistent with how it is often used for immigrants, e.g. a Chinese person who immigrates to the US could be described as Chinese-American. Or just American. The demonym can reflect both ethnicity and citizenship. Identity is complicated.
Moreover, I don't even know what you mean by "roots." The US is a country of immigrants. What qualifies as having "American roots" in your view?
I mean might be wrong to ask this question in a US based forum as you’re mostly going to be biased, but the reality is she is an Austrian that lived in the US. I feel like the hyphen changes her identity which she might not have agreed with.
Well you used a word that is crucial imho, roots, means where you come from, origins. I feel like I tend to have libertarian views regarding choosing your identity, which includes calling yourself American, Austrian or whatever, ultimately it’s you that should make this decision. But just adding hyphens to people with historical significance that decided to move to a country that at the time gave them an economic incentive by having the best market feels dirty. Especially considering that most other countries don’t do this.
You think that she became an American citizen and referred to herself as an American actress but didn’t think of herself as an American? The part we’re adding to how she described herself is Austrian, not American.
This is a forum and I’ve brought this up as a topic for conversation, I’m expressing my opinion. It’s a normal use of a forum.
And also, it sounds nothing like I’m doing that. “I feel” and “might not” are definitely signs that I’m not claiming anything just discussing the topic.
Submitters: please don't do that. It skews discussion in unhelpful ways—and particularly did so in this case. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...