Press release: The Hollywood star who gave us Wi-Fi... we explore hidden side of acting legend

16 October 2024

Gresham Professor of IT, Victoria Baines, to give talk on Tuesday, 29 October, online and in central London 

More than 90% of households in the UK have access to Wi-Fi in their homes and many cannot imagine life without it.  

Nor they can imagine getting into a car and using their phone’s GPS system to direct them through traffic jams to reach their destination without making a wrong turn.  

But few realise they owe the invention of these technologies to a Hollywood actress who starred alongside Clark Gable and James Stewart and, in real life, had to disguise herself as a maid to flee from the Nazis.  

Hedy Lamarr, who starred in the Oscar-winning film Samson and Delilah, also had a side hustle as an inventor. She devised a traffic light, a fizzy drink in tablet form, and created the genesis for what we now know as Wi-Fi and GPS.  

Gresham Professor of IT, Victoria Baines, will give a lecture entitled Messaging and Signals on Tuesday, 29 October. It takes place from 6pm at the college’s base in Barnard’s Inn Hall, Holborn.  

She will trace the development of technologies for messaging and signals, from wireless to wired and back again. 

Professor Baines said: "Since the dawn of civilisation we have devised ingenious ways of communicating. Some of them have dominated how we sent and received messages for many centuries.  

“Until the advent of the electric telegraph, they were the high-tech, high-speed messaging solutions.  

“Electrical signals are relative newcomers to this story, which takes us from rock art to Talking Drums, to the Great Wall of China, the Spanish Armada and the cutting-edge innovations of the Second World War.  

“While there are cameo roles for Morse Code and even the humble homing pigeon, the star of the show has to be the incredible female inventor of a secret communication channel, Hedy Kiesler Markey, aka Hedy Lamarr.” 

Gresham College is London’s oldest higher education institution. Founded in 1597 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, it has been delivering free public lectures for over 427 years from a lineage of leading professors and experts in their field who have included Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Iannis Xenakis and Sir Roger Penrose. 

Entry is free, and the lecture will be streamed live on YouTube. This is also free. 

In-person places can be booked online via Gresham College’s website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/history-computers 

ENDS 

Notes to Editors

Pictures available on request

For more information about this story or to arrange an interview with a Gresham Professor please contact Phil Creighton on press@gresham.ac.uk 

About Gresham College 
Gresham College has been providing free, educational lectures - at the university level - since 1597 when Sir Thomas Gresham founded the college to bring Renaissance Learning to Londoners. Our history includes some of the luminaries of the scientific revolution including Robert Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren and connects us to the founding of the Royal Society. 

Today we carry on Sir Thomas's vision. The College aims to stimulate intellectual curiosity and to champion academic rigour, professional expertise and freedom of expression. www.gresham.ac.uk 

Gresham College is a registered charity number 1039962 and relies on donations to help us encourage people's love of learning for many years to come. For more details or to make a gift, visit our website. 

About the Pre-History of IT lecture series at Gresham College 
Computers have been around for a lot longer than we realise, but not always as electrically powered machines.  

In her series of lectures, Gresham Professor Victoria Baines will explore the machines you never knew existed, some spanning hundreds of years.  

Highlights will include a look at how we owe Wi-Fi and GPS to a Hollywood actress, the earliest robots, and how present-day data thieves are loved by some and vilified by others.