Video: An inventor who was born 100 years earlier
2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55
In 1896, a man was born, about whom we can say that he was born a century earlier than it should be. His name was Lev Sergeevich Termen, and he was an absolutely "universal" person - he was engaged in the technologies of hydroacoustics, unmanned aerial vehicles (having S. P. TV model, with a screen one and a half by one and a half meters!), developed an alarm for Alcatraz and Sing-Sing …
Among the developments of Lev Termen were top-secret eavesdropping systems - "Buran" and "Zlatoust" (you can read about the latter here: "Zlatoust" in the American embassy. Masterpieces of Russian espionage). But world-wide fame was brought to him by the development of musical instruments of a new class - "wave instruments". The most famous of them is the thereminovox.
Lev Sergeevich received a professional musical education - he graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in cello. And one more thing - physics and mathematics. After the First World War, L. S. Termen continued to engage in science (and his leader was then none other than A. F. Ioffe himself), and, quite by accident, invented his most famous device.
L. S. Termen plays a musical instrument named in his honor - thereminox
In 1919, Lev Sergeevich, in order to study the properties of gas, designed a device in which, during the experiment, he discovered the property: a capacitor installed in the device reacted not only to changes in the state of the gas, but also to the position of the hands of the person conducting the experiments.
Improving the device, in the twentieth year, Theremin first showed the work of a finished thereminovox: a pair of generators with attached antennas - a straight vertical one was responsible for the pitch, the horizontal one adjusted the volume, generated vibrations that gave rise to the sounds of the instrument. How the theremin would sound depends on the movement of the player's hands: since there were no keys or strings, the player had to “feel” the music, that is, have an “ideal” hearing.
Modern thermonevox models
In 1922, Theremin played his instrument with Lenin, and a little later, when he was in America in the late twenties, with Chaplin and Einstein. After ten years of American life, Lev Sergeevich returned to the USSR and almost immediately fell under repression. After going through the Magadan camps, he worked in the "sharashka" (the famous TsKB-29, where many famous people were engaged in the most advanced research). The main focus of the work was secret projects for listening devices and alarm systems.
In the early 60s, LS Termen worked at the Moscow Conservatory, improving his instruments, but in 1967 he was fired after G. Schonberg's article about him in the New York Times. Nevertheless, until his death he continued to study science and music, having got a job at Moscow State University as a mechanic of the physics department.
Many composers and musicians used the theremin to perform their works - from D. Shostakovich to Led Zeppelin (for example, in the song "Whole Lotta Love"), Jean Michel Zhara and Tom Weits … The title theme of the series "Doctor Who" - guess what it was played on ?
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