Lev Sergeyevich Termen (28 August [O.S. 16 August] 1896 – 3 November 1993), better known as Leon Theremin, was a Russian inventor, most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments and the first to be mass-produced. He also worked on early television research. His 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 secretly eavesdrop on conversations.
Early life Leon Theremin was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1896. His father was Sergei Emilievich Theremin, of French Huguenot descent. His mother was Yevgenia Antonova Orzhinskaya, who was of German ancestry. He had a sister named Helena. In the seventh grade of his high school, in front of an audience of students and parents, he demonstrated various optical effects using electricity. By the age of 17, he was in his last year of high school and had his own laboratory at home for experimenting with high-frequency circuits, optics and magnetic fields. His cousin, Kirill Fedorovich Nesturkh, then a young physicist, invited him to attend the defense of the dissertation of Abram Fedorovich Ioffe. Physics lecturer Vladimir Konstantinovich Lebedinskiy had explained to Theremin the dispute over Ioffe's work on the electron. On 9 May 1913, Theremin and his cousin attended Ioffe's dissertation defense. Ioffe's subject was on the elementary photoelectric effect, the magnetic field of cathode rays and related investigations. In 1917, 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. Theremin wrote that he found this explanation revelatory and that it fit a scientific – not abstract – view of the world, different scales of magnitude, and matter. From then on, Theremin endeavoured to study the microcosm, in the same way he had studied the macrocosm with his hand-built telescope. Later, Kirill introduced Theremin to Ioffe as a young experimenter and physicist, and future student of the university. 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 ionize the air. He then wished to further investigate the effects using university resources. A chance meeting with Abram Fedorovich Ioffe led to a recommendation to see Karl Karlovich Baumgart, who was in charge of the physics laboratory equipment. Karl then reserved a room and equipment for Theremin's experiments. Abram Fedorovich suggested Theremin also look at methods of creating gas fluorescence under different conditions and of examining the resulting light's spectrum. However, during these investigations Theremin was called up for military service as a result of World War I.
World War I and Russian Civil War Although only in his second academic year, the deanery of the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy recommended that Theremin go to the Nikolayevska Military Engineering School in Petrograd (previously Saint Petersburg), which usually only accepted students in their fourth year. Theremin recalled that Ioffe reassured him that the war would not last long and that military experience would be useful for scientific applications. Beginning his military service in 1916, Theremin finished the Military Engineering School in six months, progressed through the Graduate Electronic School for Officers, and attained the military radio-engineer diploma in the same year. In the course of the next three and a half years he oversaw the construction of a radio station in Saratov to connect the Volga area with Moscow, graduated from Petrograd University, became deputy leader of the new Military Radiotechnical Laboratory in Moscow, and finished as the broadcast supervisor of the radio transmitter at Tsarskoye Selo near Petrograd (then renamed Detskoye Selo). During the Russian Civil War, in October 1919 White Army commander Nikolai Nikolayevich Yudenich advanced on Petrograd from the side of Detskoye Selo, apparently intending to capture the radio station to announce a victory over the Bolsheviks. Theremin and others evacuated the station, sending equipment east on rail cars. Theremin then detonated explosives to destroy the 120-meter-high antenna mast before traveling to Petrograd to set up an international listening station. There he also trained radio specialists but reported difficulties obtaining food and working with foreign experts whom he described as narrow-minded pessimists. Theremin recalled that on an evening when his hopes of overcoming these obstructing experts reached a low ebb, Abram Fedorovich Ioffe telephoned him. Ioffe asked 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.
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