Last weekend I watched a film, Bombshell, with one the most unlikely stories I can imagine. A 1940s film actress, Hedy Lamarr, invented a form of encrypted communication which now underlies GPS, Bluetooth and various other kinds of modern communications. Very sadly, she never got paid or properly recognised, and her invention was not widely adopted until the late 1950s and sixties.
It reminds me of some of the stories in Paul Kennedy's Engineers of Victory. Although he was following the stories of people who had seen their inventions go through and become effective. Those who believe in historical determinism and inevitability would do well to ponder these stories.
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