this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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What's your evidence, Richard Easton??!?

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[–] Icaria@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

This post is inaccurate. Neither WiFi nor GPS use FHSS, nor is Lamarr anything close to singularly credited with FHSS' invention (the earliest patent is credited to Nikola Tesla). This also implies that the Allies used her parent - they did not.

Also Richard Easton is the son of the man who invented GPS and had every right to be skeptical of this claim, and it looks like Internet dipsh*ts have bullied him into deleting his twitter account over this.

[–] zik@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

This is mostly wrong: while she did invent what would later be called Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS), it isn't used in modern WiFi or in GPS. It is used in Bluetooth though.

I should point out that techniques like FHSS are only a part of what makes up a radio communication method. You can't say it was "the basis of Bluetooth" just because FHSS is one of the many technologies used in Bluetooth. She certainly contributed though.

[–] AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Calling Hedy Lamarr "the Mother of Wifi" because she invented FHSS is like calling E. A. Johnson, who invented the first capacitive touchscreen in 1965, "the Father of the iPhone".

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

i’m pretty comfortable with calling him that. capacitive touchscreens are a big deal sounds like he deserves the praise.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You could always call him "the father of the capacitive touchscreen".

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 0 points 2 years ago

that’s what the word “inventor” is for

[–] FBJimmy@lemmus.org 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Great to recognise this invention.

I was surprised by the choice of 'Mother of Wi-Fi' though - Wi-Fi hasn't used 'frequency hopping' as such since 802.11b was released back in 1999 - so very few people will have ever used frequency-hopping Wi-Fi.

GPS only uses it in some extreme cases I think, but I'm not an expert.

However, Bluetooth absolutely does depend on it to function in most situations, so 'Mother of Bluetooth' might have been more appropriate.

[–] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So her invention isn't used for Wifi now, but was used in the initial design of it? You might even say she helped give birth to it...

[–] FBJimmy@lemmus.org 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I guess my point is that it isn't a particularly important part of the design of Wi-Fi - they included it in the very first iteration in 1997 and realised by 1999 they didn't need it. Therefore Wi-Fi would likely have been born regardless of the invention; Bluetooth would not.

[–] sidtirouluca@lemm.ee 0 points 11 months ago
[–] VubDapple@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

From the wiki page

During the late 1930s, Lamarr attended arms deals with her then-husband arms dealer Fritz Mandl, "possibly to improve his chances of making a sale".[41] From the meetings, she learned that navies needed "a way to guide a torpedo as it raced through the water." Radio control had been proposed. However, an enemy might be able to jam such a torpedo's guidance system and set it off course.[42] When later discussing this with a new friend, composer and pianist George Antheil, her idea to prevent jamming by frequency hopping met Antheil's previous work in music. In that earlier work, Antheil attempted synchronizing note-hopping in the avant-garde piece written as a score for the film Ballet Mechanique that involved multiple synchronized player pianos. Antheil's idea in the piece was to synchronize the start time of identical player pianos with identical player piano rolls, so the pianos would be playing in time with one another. Together, they realized that radio frequencies could be changed similarly, using the same kind of mechanism, but miniaturized.[4][41]

[–] balp@feddit.nu 1 points 2 years ago

And then we should remember that the patent is on the way of getting the synchronisation, not frequency hoping as such an already know technology. And the connection to Bluetooth and Wifi get down to almost 0.