As a part of International Women’s History Month, we have been looking at some of the women who served as intelligence officers and spies. Women have not just served in the field, however. They have made important contributions as inventors and engineers. James Bond has Q. But others have had women gadgeteers.
Actress and Tech Maven
Hedy Lamarr was one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Austria, she was put under contract by MGM and then Paramount. But what most people do not know is that she was a talented inventor. She was the co-inventor of a communications system that used randomly varying radio frequencies to prevent interception by the enemy. While she received little recognition for her work at the time, she is now recognized as one of the pioneers in “spread spectrum” technology which makes cellular phones, faxes, and other wireless communications systems possible today. America’s Inventor notes:
Two years later, when Lamarr was just 26 years old and one of the great sex symbols of all time, they were awarded U.S. Patent Number 2,292,387 on August 11, 1942, under the name “Hedy Keisler Markey” and George Antheil for a “Secret Communications System.”
The Original Female Code Breaker
Genevieve Feinstein was a brilliant mathematician and code breaker. She was responsible for the work that lead to the construction of the “Purple” code deciphering machine that allowed the Allies to read Japanese diplomatic messages. Later, she was an instrumental part of the “Venona” project, which would do the same for KGB message traffic. The NSA states that “The discovery was labeled … the most important single cryptanalytic break in the whole history of Venona .”
Killer Chef
Julia Child had a life before sipping wine over haute cuisine on television. Rejected by the military in World War II for being too tall, she found work with the OSS. She cooked up a shark repellent in her kitchen that was adopted by the Navy in 1944 and used for decades. During the final years of the war, Julia was stationed in the CBI where she met her future husband, OSS officer Paul Child.
Where you hide secrets when you’re not wearing clothes
Josephine Baker, an American-born black dancer, was the toast of Paris in the years before World War II. With the fall of France, she joined the Resistance and made valuable contributions gathering intelligence from loose-lipped German admirers as well as serving as a courier. Her secrets were conveyed in invisible ink on her sheet music. It is ironic in some ways that the performer known for her nearly invisible costumes was carrying important information that was also invisible.
Spy Sisters
Lastly, this item from Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS by Elizabeth P. McIntosh about Margaret Griggs, who was in charge of recruiting women for the OSS:
“The Message Center wants a girl math shark,” she was heard to groan one day. “Research and Analysis wants an expert on the Kachins and their tribal life styles; a colonel in Africa wired for a combination secretary-seamstress to sew agents’ clothes so they’ll look ‘of the country’ and not off a Brooks Brothers rack. Visual Presentation wants an artist for our London war room. Cartography wants a girl with steady hands to retrace lines on captured maps. And M.O. (Morale Operations),” she added, “just called in for a lady Vari’Typer.’ What, may I ask, is a Vari Typer?”
These are the women of espionage, the inventors, the couriers and the Vari Typers.
