10 Forgotten Historical Figures You Didn't Know Changed Your Life

Scratch the surface of accomplished actor Hedy Lamarr and you discover there are hidden depths to the person once described as the 'world's most beautiful woman'.

Lamarr, who was Jewish, married Fritz Mandl, a Nazi arms dealer, who pressured her to give up her film career and become a housewife/arm-candy. Hedwig would listen as Mandl and his Nazi scientist friends would discuss emerging new wartime technology over dinner.

She escaped Mandl and fled to America, where she began a new film career.

Together with George Antheil, an avant-garde composer, she came up with an innovation in radio-controlled torpedoes. These torpedoes worked on a single frequency, which made it easy to jam the frequency and send the torpedoes off-target.

So Lamarr and Antheil devised a system that could switch quickly between frequencies, making them harder to jam. Their creation became known as spread-spectrum technology, which formed the basis for the technology that would later become Bluetooth and Wifi.

Lamarr and Antheil acquired a patent for their invention which they gave to the Navy for free. The Navy was dismissive, told Hedy to stick to selling war bonds, and did nothing with the technology for the next three years.

She was finally recognised for the innovation in 1997, three years before her death.