Hedy Lamarr’s how-to tip on looking glamorous was the penultimate invitation to underestimate. 
While she stood still, she was thinking like the rocket scientist she was.
See Richard Rhodes‘ “Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World.”
Mary Anderson was no actress. Like all American women of her era, she couldn’t even vote. But in 1903, she could apparently see better than most. While on a trolley car in New York far from her Alabama home, she saw automobile drivers getting out of the car to wipe the windshield. That didn’t make the most sense to her.
So despite ridicule by some who could vote and others who probably wished they could clean up like Mary would, she designed a swinging rod with a rubber blade operated by hand from inside the car. Mary Anderson had invented the first windshield wiper no motor vehicle would ever do without again. 
A few clean and drier years later, another woman, Charlotte Bridgwood, improved a good idea, winning a patent for an automated version called the “Storm Windshield Cleaner.” Automobiles would become fertile ground for a number of inventions patented by women.
Women everywhere can thank goodness (which may have had little to do with it) for Mary Phelps “Polly” Jacob. 
The New York socialite scored with women in the early 20th century, creating a collective opportunity to exhale with a soft alternative to steel rods and whale boned corsets. 
With the help of an unsung maid, she stitched two perfectly positioned handkerchiefs to a piece of ribbon and voilà! – the modern brassière was born and first worn before it slipped off and some say later back on with rods and bones. Just ask any woman in underwires. 
Polly, like statistics show women often do, may have undervalued her work. She sold her invention to a threatened Warner Brothers Corset Company for $1,500. Estimated value of the invention of the bra: $15 million.
Ever seen a flat bottom paper grocery bag? Margaret Knight would be proud. In 1869, she invented the machine to make them. Previous paper bags looked more like envelopes. Her coworkers at the paper bag company reportedly disregarded her idea as one stole it from her before she fought and won back her rights and the patent in 1873. She went on to earn over 20 patents.
The disposable diaper was invented by another thinking woman rarely standing still. Mother of two Marion Donovan’s idea would be wildly successful but not before it was turned down by every major manufacturer as basically unnecessary and unworkable. 
In 1965, Stephanie Kwolek invented Kevlar. And in 1991, while making breakfast with her father, 8 year old Abigail Fleck cooked up an idea for a microwavable dish with a bacon rack. In doing so, little Abbey created a quicker, better way to make the favored egg associate with less fat, a new company with her father and a manufacturing plan with money borrowed by her grandfather. Wal-mart’s 
first order for Abbey’s Makin’ Bacon microwave baking dish numbered 100,000. Last word has it Abbey was living probably well in California.
New technology connects even more dots for women, brains and breakthroughs. See LifeBooker, Blurb and Flickr, all founded or co-founded by women. After Flickr, co-founder Caterina Fake created web mapping program Hunch. Then eBay had a Hunch – literally – buying the company for a reported $80 million in 2011.
Ms. Lamarr, inventor, movie star, world renown woman of intrigue said “any woman can look glamorous. All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.”
Maybe. Or maybe innovation is glamorous.
Either way, it doesn’t take a gorgeous rocket scientist to tell all women to stand still sometimes, stay smart and never underestimate your sweet self worth.
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