Billed as ‘the world’s most beautiful woman,’ actress Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) was no slouch in the brains department either. In 1942, Lamarr and composer George Antheil were awarded a patent for their ‘Secret Communications System.’ An early version of Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (try saying that 3 times fast), this method of transmitting radio signals by rapidly switching a carrier among many frequency channels is key to today’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cell phone technology.