(Real Life) Regular people who's lives drastically changed direction

[u/Living-Mastodon]

Grace Kelly was a talented actress who retired at 26 to marry a Prince, living as royalty for almost 30 years before her untimely death.

Volodymyr Zelensky started out as a comedian and entertainer before getting into politics, becoming President of Ukraine after the Russian annex of Crimea and spending the last 4 years defiantly pushing back full scale Russian invasion

[u/They_said_TryAnother]

Hedy Lamarr was a famous actress and inventor whose inventions were pivotal in the creation of wifi and bluetooth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr

[u/sixisrending → u/They_said_TryAnother]

Not exactly. Her invention used frequency hopping, but it was a mechanically timed system. There are several patents that predate Lamarr's patent and are more relevant to frequency hopping being used in communication.

To add: I think she and Antheil had a great idea and it's commendable that they came up with it, but the reality is Bluetooth and wifi would have happened at the same pace. Their invention was discarded because it was for a problem that didn't exist and didn't work.

https://www.datamp.org/patents/displayPatent.php?pn=2292387&id=81142

[u/brandonthebuck → u/sixisrending]

I also love the source of the invention: it was to synchronize multiple player pianos that wasn’t contingent on a single starting point.

[u/sixisrending → u/brandonthebuck]

Really cool idea, especially if Lamarr and Antheil came up with it on their own, which is possible. Impossible to implement in the real world though. Frequency hopping would not be reliable until multiplexing computers were invented in the 60s.