Richard Rhodes - Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World
 
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hedys-folly-richard-rhodes/1101893299?ean=9780307742957

Read by Bernadette Dunne, V6, Unabridged

Overview
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a remarkable story of science history: how a ravishing film star and an avant-garde composer invented spread-spectrum radio, the technology that made wireless phones, GPS systems, and many other devices possible.

Beginning at a Hollywood dinner table, Hedy's Folly tells a wild story of innovation that culminates in U.S. patent number 2,292,387 for a "secret communication system." Along the way Rhodes weaves together Hollywood’s golden era, the history of Vienna, 1920s Paris, weapons design, music, a tutorial on patent law and a brief treatise on transmission technology. Narrated with the rigor and charisma we've come to expect of Rhodes, it is a remarkable narrative adventure about spread-spectrum radio's genesis and unlikely amateur inventors collaborating to change the world.

Kirkus Reviews
The author of The Twilight of the Bomb (2010) returns with the surprising story of a pivotal invention produced during World War II by a pair of most unlikely inventors--an avant-garde composer and the world's most glamorous movie star. Pulitzer and NBA winner Rhodes offers the stories of his two principals in alternating segments, sometimes chapter-length. The diminutive pianist/composer George Antheil--who worked with Stravinsky, Ezra Pound, Balanchine, DeMille and other notables--was also a prolific writer and inventor. And Lamarr (born Hedwig Kiesler), smitten by the theater in her native Austria, married a wealthy man charmed by Nazis; she later fled for Hollywood, where she quickly established herself as a major star in such films as Algiers and Ziegfeld Girl. She crossed trails with Antheil, who'd also moved west. Rhodes shows us that Lamarr (a new surname name suggested by the wife of Louis B. Mayer) was extremely bright (though poorly educated), a woman who had an area in her house devoted to inventing. And Antheil--who'd once composed a piece requiring 16 synchronized player pianos--had inventing interests that dovetailed with Lamarr's. They worked together to invent a way to radio-guide torpedoes and to use a technique called frequency-hopping to insure that the enemy could not jam their signals. Lamarr and Antheil secured a patent, but the U.S. Navy did not adopt the device, which, as Rhodes shows, would form the foundations of today's Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies. Antheil died before earning any recognition for this achievement, but Lamarr, late in her life, did receive awards. The author quotes liberally--perhaps overly so--from the memoirs of his principals. A faded blossom of a story, artfully restored to bright bloom.

From Barnes & Noble
One would not expect to see the names "Richard Rhodes" and "Hedy Lamarr" on the same cover. Rhodes is the National Book Award and National Critics Circle Award-winning author of books on the nuclear history and Lamarr is the Austrian actress (1913-2000) who Max Reinhardt called "the most beautiful woman in the world." (For obvious reasons, the name stuck once she got to Hollywood.) In addition to her beguiling face, Lamarr possessed a rigorous, innovative mind. After fleeing fascist Austria in 1937 and Europe at the beginning of World War II, the Jewish beauty came to America. At a Tinsel Town dinner party, she met avant-garde composer George Antheil (1900-1959). Their conversations, which began with a discussion of breast enhancement evolved into something ultimately more stimulating: the invention of spread spectrum technology, an innovation that not only aided the Allied war effort, but is also an integral part of millions of digital devices. An utterly fascinating story; Richard Rhodes has done it again.