海蒂·拉玛

《装腔指南》

Hedy Lamarr 

Try to think of a handful of people who have excelled in two entirely unconnected fields. A prime minister with his own boutique fashion line, say. Or perhaps an NBA championship-winning basketball player who was also a chess grandmaster. It isn’t easy to compile a convincing catalogue, but one who should undoubtedly appear on any such list is the Hollywood sex symbol Hedy Lamarr, who took time out from playing smouldering femmes fatales to invent an unjammable missile-guidance system for use by the Allies in the Second World War.

Born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna, she rose to fame at the age of eighteen when she became the first actress to portray an orgasm onscreen. For anyone interested, the exuberant and oddly touching scene, which appeared in the 1933 movie Ekstase, can be found on YouTube. Soon afterwards, she married a jealous munitions manufacturer named Friedrich Mandl who tried to destroy every copy of the film. Marital life could be tense, with Hedy expected to play the dutiful wife while her husband had the likes of Hitler and Mussolini to dinner at his schloss. It was while listening to his conversations that the girl, who had always been scientifically minded, first developed a serious interest in weapons technology. Yet the shared enthusiasm wasn’t enough to save the marriage. In the late 1930s, she did a runner, making her way to Hollywood where, performing as Hedy Lamarr, she became a huge star.

Billed as ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’, she was dazzling to look at, with perfect bow lips, a delicate nose, and knowing eyes. Few, though, would claim she was a brilliant actress. In any case, she was bored by the boozing and the schmoozing required to sustain her career. In her spare time, Hedy liked nothing better than to hunker over her drafting table and invent things. (Her devices included a traffic light and a tablet for creating a carbonated drink.) In 1940, working with the avant-garde composer George Antheil, she came up with a ‘spread spectrum’ system for directing torpedoes. Because it continually altered the frequency of the radio waves it used, no one could block it. The US Defense Department didn’t adopt the new technology at the time, but dug it out in the 1960s. A version of Hedy’s system is now used in all wireless communication, including mobile phones and wifi. It wasn’t until decades later that the former film star began to receive the credit for her work. When a communications company gave her an award in the 1990s, she observed drily, ‘It’s about time.’

P209 海蒂·拉玛

请你想想看有几个人能在两个完全不相关的领域都有出色的表现。比如，一位拥有自己的精品时装品牌的首相。或者一位同时也是国际象棋大师的NBA冠军篮球运动员。汇编一个令人信服的目录并不容易，但毫无疑问，好莱坞性感女神海蒂·拉玛(Hedy Lamarr)应该出现在任何一个这样的名单上，她从扮演闷闷不乐的蛇蝎美人中抽出时间来发明了一种不受干扰的导弹制导系统，供二战中的盟军使用。

她出生在维也纳，原名海德薇·凯斯勒， 18岁时成为第一个在银幕上描绘性高潮的女演员，并一举成名。有兴趣的人可以在YouTube上找到1933年的电影《神魂颠倒》中出现的这一热情洋溢的动人场景。后来，她嫁给了一个善妒的军火制造商，名叫弗里德里希·曼德尔，他试图销毁这部电影的每一份拷贝。婚姻生活可能很紧张，海蒂被期望扮演一个尽职的妻子，而她的丈夫有希特勒和墨索里尼这样的人来他的城堡吃饭。正是在听他谈话的过程中，这个一直具有科学头脑的女人第一次对武器技术产生了浓厚的兴趣。然而，共同的热情并不足以挽救这段婚姻。在20世纪30年代末，她逃离家庭来到了好莱坞，在那里她扮演海蒂·拉玛，成为了一名巨星。

被誉为“世界上最美丽的女人”，她有着迷人的外表，完美的弯嘴，精致的鼻子和通晓世故的眼睛。然而，很少有人会说她是一位才华横溢的女演员。无论如何，她对维持她的职业生涯所需要的豪饮和闲扯倍感厌烦。在她的业余时间，海蒂最喜欢坐在她的绘图桌旁发明东西。(她的发明包括一个交通灯和一个用来制造碳酸饮料的片剂。)1940年，她与前卫作曲家乔治·安泰尔(George Antheil)合作，提出了一种“展频”鱼雷导航系统。因为它能不断地改变它所使用的无线电波的频率，没人能阻拦它。美国国防部当时并没有立刻采用这项新技术，20世纪60年代才又将其挖掘出来。海蒂系统的一个版本现在被用于所有的无线通信，包括移动电话和wifi。直到几十年后，这位前电影明星才开始因她的作品而获得赞誉。1990年代，当一家通讯公司颁奖给她，海蒂干瘪瘪地说了一句“是时候了”。