Inventing beauty

摘要

Hedy Lamarr was no mere Hollywood starlet. The twentieth-century Austrian-American actress was also a tech-head, taking inspiration from the self-playing 'player piano' to create technology of a type now used in mobile phones. Richard Rhodess biography, Hedy's Folly, gives this side of her story its due. For some, her intelligence sits uneasily with her exquisite looks, and her invention looks like an eccentric sideline. Another biography - Hedy Lamarr by cinematic scholar Ruth Barton, published last year -was a solid portrait but devoted just ten pages to Lamarrs undercover life as an inventor. However, her engineering work, conducted largely in collaboration with avant-garde US composer and pianist George Antheil, was genuine.