Jewish Invention Myths: Wi-Fi

I was just asked today about someone making a jewish invention claim on X – formerly Twitter – by a follower of mine. He linked me to this tweet made by @gynaeceum in Swedish which claims that Wi-Fi was invented by a ‘jewish woman’. (1)

No other information was provided but after a little searching I found this likely refers to Hedy Lamarr and her so-called ‘invention’ of ‘Frequency-hopping Spread Spectrum Technology’, which I have covered in detail in a separate article. (2)

I have also since discovered an article by Chris Skinner which is apparently a copy and paste from a Facebook article. (3)

He writes that:

‘You see, this young Austrian starlet would take one of the most valuable technologies ever developed right from under Hitler's nose. After fleeing to America, she not only became a major Hollywood star, her name sits on one of the most important patents ever granted by the U.S. Patent Office. Today, when you use your cell phone or, over the next few years, as you experience super-fast wireless Internet access (via something called “long-term evolution” or “LTE” technology), you'll be using an extension of the technology a 20-year-old actress first conceived while sitting at dinner with Hitler.’

‘At the height of her fame, in 1942, she developed a new kind of communications system, optimized for sending coded messages that couldn't be “jammed.” She was building a system that would allow torpedoes and guided bombs to always reach their targets. She was building a system to kill Nazis. By the 1940s, both the Nazis and the Allied forces were using the kind of single frequency radio-controlled technology Kiesler's ex-husband had been peddling. The drawback of this technology was that the enemy could find the appropriate frequency and “jam” or intercept the signal, thereby interfering with the missile's intended path.

Kiesler's key innovation was to “change the channel.” It was a way of encoding a message across a broad area of the wireless spectrum. If one part of the spectrum was jammed, the message would still get through on one of the other frequencies being used. The problem was, she could not figure out how to synchronize the frequency changes on both the receiver and the transmitter. To solve the problem, she turned to perhaps the world's first techno-musician, George Anthiel.

Anthiel was an acquaintance of Kiesler who achieved some notoriety for creating intricate musical compositions. He synchronized his melodies across twelve player pianos, producing stereophonic sounds no one had ever heard before. Kiesler incorporated Anthiel's technology for synchronizing his player pianos. Then, she was able to synchronize the frequency changes between a weapon's receiver and its transmitter. On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and “Hedy Kiesler Markey,” which was Kiesler's married name at the time.’

‘You are probably using Lamarr's technology, too. Her patent sits at the foundation of “spread spectrum technology,” which you use every day when you log on to a wi-fi network or make calls with your Bluetooth-enabled phone. It lies at the heart of the massive investments being made right now in so-called fourth-generation “LTE” wireless technology. This next generation of cell phones and cell towers will provide tremendous increases to wireless network speed and quality, by spreading wireless signals across the entire available spectrum. This kind of encoding is only possible using the kind of frequency switching that Hedwig Kiesler invented.’

The problem with Skinner’s claims – which aren’t his but rather his regurgitated them from Facebook post without checking them (which is easy enough to do) – is that they are almost all complete nonsense.

This is because:

A) Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil’s patent for the ‘Secret Communication System’ for torpedoes has never been used. (4)

B) Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil weren’t the first to come up with ‘Frequency-hopping Spread Spectrum Technology’; the concept was first created and used by famous Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in 1899 (5) and then applied practically by Polish engineer Leonard Danilewicz in 1929. (6)

C) Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil’s ‘Secret Communication System’ involved using piano player rolls to switch between multiple frequencies preventing radio jamming, which is remarkably similar to Kurt Dannehl and Paul Kotowski’s – engineers at Telefunken – German patent for a ‘device to hide voice signals under a broadband noise like signal produced by a rotating generator’ granted in 1935 (i.e., six years earlier). (7)

D) Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil applied for the patent for the ‘Secret Communication System’ on 10th June 1941 that was then granted on 11th August 1942; they didn’t invent it in 1942 – that’s only when the US patent was granted – (8) as Skinner blithely claims.

E) It was George Antheil not Hedy Lamarr who seems to have invented the ‘Secret Communication System’ as Lamarr herself all but admitted to ‘Stars and Stripes’ in an interview published on 19th November 1945. (9)

F) Wi-Fi does use ‘Frequency Switching’ as part of what it does but ‘Frequency Switching’ is not Wi-Fi (the same way that telephone technology isn’t the same thing as cell phone technology), so Skinner is essentially presenting the two things as the same when they simply aren’t.

Who did invent Wi-Fi then?

Well, the answer is Australian engineer called John O’Sullivan in 1992 after beginning work on it in 1989. (10)

Not Hedy Lamarr.

References

(1) https://twitter.com/gynaeceum/status/1788209968732110887

(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-frequency

(3) https://thefinanser.com/2024/02/who-invented-wifi

(4) Ari Ben-Menahem, 2009, ‘Historical Encyclopaedia of Natural and Mathematical Sciences’, Vol. 1, Springer: New York, pp. 4527-4530

(5) David Kahn, 2014, ‘How I Discovered World War II’s Great Spy and Other Stories of Intelligence and Code’, 1st Edition, CRC Press: Boca Raton, p. 158

(6) Ibid.; Wladyslaw Kozaczuk, 1984, ‘Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two’, 1st Edition, University Publications of America: Lanham, p. 27

(7) Kahn, Op. Cit., p. 158

(8) https://patents.google.com/patent/US2292387

(9) http://patentlawcenter.pli.edu/2011/12/05/the-truth-about-hedy-lamarr/

(10) https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6045947/csiro-wi-fi-invention-to-feature-in-upcoming-exhibition-at-national-museum-of-australia/