34 Facts About Leon Theremin

1.

Leon Theremin's secret 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.

2.

Leon Theremin was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire in 1896.

3.

Leon Theremin's father was Sergei Emilievich Theremin, of French Huguenot descent.

4.

Leon Theremin's mother was Yevgenia Antonova Orzhinskaya and of German ancestry.

5.

In 1917 Leon Theremin wrote that Ioffe talked of electrons, the photoelectric effect and magnetic fields as parts of an objective reality that surrounds us every day, unlike others that talked more of somewhat abstract formulae and symbols.

6.

Leon Theremin recalled that while still in his last year of school, he had built a million-volt Tesla coil and noticed a strong glow associated with his attempts to ionise the air.

7.

Leon Theremin then wished to further investigate the effects using university resources.

8.

Abram Fedorovich suggested Leon Theremin look at methods of creating gas fluorescence under different conditions and of examining the resulting light's spectra.

9.

However, during these investigations Leon Theremin was called up for World War I military service.

10.

Leon Theremin recalled that Ioffe reassured him that the war would not last long and that military experience would be useful for scientific applications.

11.

Leon Theremin then detonated explosives to destroy the 120-meter-high antennae mast before traveling to Petrograd to set up an international listening station.

12.

Leon Theremin recalled that on an evening when his hopes of overcoming these obstructing experts reached a low ebb, Abram Fedorovich Ioffe telephoned him.

13.

Ioffe asked Leon Theremin to come to his newly founded Physical Technical Institute in Petrograd, and the next day he invited him to start work at developing measuring methods for high-frequency electrical oscillations.

14.

The day after Ioffe's invitation, Leon Theremin started at the institute.

15.

Leon Theremin worked in diverse fields: applying the Laue effect to the new field of X-ray analysis of crystals; using hypnosis to improve measurement-reading accuracy; working with Ivan Pavlov's laboratory; and using gas-filled lamps as measuring devices.

16.

Leon Theremin built a high-frequency oscillator to measure the dielectric constant of gases with high precision; Ioffe then urged him to look for other applications using this method, and shortly made the first motion detector for use as a "radio watchman".

17.

Leon Theremin recalled trying to find the notes for tunes he remembered from when he played the cello, such as The Swan, by Saint-Saens.

18.

On 24 May 1924 Leon Theremin married 20-year-old Katia Konstantinova, and they lived together in his parents' apartment on Marat street.

19.

In 1925 Leon Theremin went to Germany to sell both the radio watchman and Termenvox patents to the German firm Goldberg and Sons.

20.

Leon Theremin's device was the first functioning television apparatus in Russia.

21.

Leon Theremin performed the theremin with the New York Philharmonic in 1928.

22.

Leon Theremin patented his invention in the United States in 1928 and subsequently granted commercial production rights to RCA.

23.

Leon Theremin set up a laboratory in New York in the 1930s, where he further refined the theremin and experimented with other inventions and new electronic musical instruments.

24.

Two years later, Leon Theremin conducted the first-ever electronic orchestra, featuring the theremin and other electronic instruments including a "fingerboard" theremin which resembled a cello in use.

25.

Leon Theremin had several times proposed to her, but she chose to marry attorney Robert Rockmore, and thereafter used his name professionally.

26.

The US Federal Bureau of Prisons hired Leon Theremin to build a metal detector for Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.

27.

Leon Theremin was interested in a role for the theremin in dance music.

28.

Leon Theremin developed performance locations that could automatically react to dancers' movements with varied patterns of sound and light.

29.

Beryl Campbell, one of Leon Theremin's dancers, said his wife Lavinia "called to say that he had been kidnapped from his studio" and that "some Russians had come in" and that she felt that he was going to be spirited out of the country.

30.

Many years later, it was revealed that Leon Theremin had returned to his native land due to tax and financial difficulties in the United States.

31.

In 1947, Leon Theremin was awarded the Stalin prize for inventing this advance in Soviet espionage technology.

32.

Leon Theremin invented another listening device called The Thing, hidden in a replica of the Great Seal of the United States carved in wood.

33.

Leon Theremin worked at the Moscow Conservatory of Music for 10 years where he taught, and built theremins, electronic cellos and some terpsitones.

34.

Leon Theremin made a demonstration concert at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in early 1993 before dying in Moscow on Wednesday 3 November 1993 at the age of 97.