Austria: Hedy Lamarr

On 27th January I got five postcards: three from Austria, one from the Philippines and one from Kyrgyzstan.

One of the cards from Austria shows Hedy Lamarr. Hedy Lamarr was born in Vienna in 1914. After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, she fled from her husband and moved to Paris. On a trip to London a movie contract in Hollywood was offered to her by Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. During the 1930s up until the 1950s Hedy Lamarr was a major movie star. Her last movie was released in 1958 and two years later she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Beside her role as actress she was also an inventor. Together with composer George Antheil she developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes at the beginning of World War II, intended to use frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers. Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the idea lived on in technologies like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. In 2014 Lamarr and Antheil were inducted in the American National Inventors Hall of Fame. Hedy Lamarr died in Florida in 2000. 

The card was turned into a maxicard. The stamp was issued on 22nd January 2020 and celebrates Hedy Lamarr's role as inventor.

The same stamp as one the front side was also used on the backside.

Thank You very much Anita!