Leon Theremin

Leon Theremin is a perfect example of a beautiful mind - he was not only a scientist, but also an artist. I first learned about him reading about Thereminvox. It's still a mystery to me why we didn't study about him at school. His life and work were so rich and interesting that it such a shame there is no good interview with him. He died at the age of 97 seeing collapse of the both Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

Most famous for his invention of the theremin (a.k.a Thereminvox), one of the first electronic musical instruments and the first to be mass-produced. He also devised the one of the earliest interlace techniques for improving the quality of a video signal. His listening device, "The Thing", hung for seven years in plain view in the United States Ambassador's Moscow office and enabled Soviet agents to eavesdrop on secret conversations.

In 1922, he met Lenin while demostrating Thereminvox at Kremlin. In 1991, at the age of 95 he joined Communist Party because he promised Lenin to do so.

In 1927, following his success from Thereminvox, Theremin found his way to the United States, where he worked for the next 10 years. He set up a laboratory, where amongst other visitors were George Gershwin and Albert Einstein. During this period, he was hired by Federal Bureau of Prisons to build a metal detector for Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.

In 1938, under unclear circumstances Theremin abruptly returned to the Soviet Union. Shortly after he returned he was imprisoned in the Butyrka prison and later put to work in a sharashka (a secret laboratory in the Gulag camp system, together with Andrei Tupolev, Sergei Korolev, and other well-known scientists and engineers.

During his work at the sharashka, Theremin created the Buran eavesdropping system - a precursor to the modern laser microphone it worked by using a low-power infrared beam from a distance to detect sound vibrations in glass windows. Here, he also created another listening device called The Thing.

The Soviet Union rehabilitated him in 1956 and Leon volunteered to remain working with the KGB until 1966.

In 1967, because of an article by Schonberg mentioning Theremin, he was suppressed again and banned from his electronic music projects.

In the Soviet Union Theremin remained unknown for his own inventions.

See also