After reading and writing about Lev Sergeyevich Termen and his wonderful invention of the Theremin, I could not stop thinking about the other remarkable yet much more devious thing he had built; a spying device called “The Thing”
In 1945 a delegation of the USSR equivalent of the Boy Scouts called Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union came to give the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow W. Averell Harriman an elaborately carved version of the Great Seal of the United States. The odd thing about this was that Harriman accepted the present not entirely unlike the Trojans accepted the wooden horse built by the Greeks a few thousand years earlier. And just as the Trojan horse, there was something devious and dangerous lurking inside, just this time instead of an army of Spartans it was highly suffisticated electronic bug. This bug came to be known as "The Thing" and was devised and designed by our musical friend Lev Termen. Unbknownst to this, the Ambassador hung the present where it could oversee the most intimate of conversations in the embassy, the ambassador’s residential study.
Granted, 1945 was before the Cold War and the US and the USSR were still largely allies from WWII. Granted also, that electronic espionage was a rather novel field and the naïveté of both the ambassador and his counter intelligence staff might be excusable. It does strike me as odd, however, that a foreign nation would even accept such a gift as sovereign as an insignia such as the Great Seal of the US, but diplomacy seems to be a windy road.
The great seal and thus "The Thing" hung in the study until 1952 from were it sent out intimate classified conversations to the growing enemy around. Despite several electronic surveillance sweeps performed, "The Thing" was not detected by counter-intelligence measures; it was detected by coincidence instead. Here’s the story:
A British radio operator simply one day overheard American conversations on an open radio channel as the Soviets were beaming radio waves at the ambassador's office. The content of the conversation must have struck him has odd and after alerting those higher up in the chain of command, which in turn alerted the Department of State what must have been a hectic search ensued. The method of detection they used was a radio frequency sweep together with an audio feedback system. When feedback was strongest, the frequency was the one intended by Termen. Simple walking through both embassy and residence and finding out where any conversation was transmitted loudest could they then isolate the room where the device was located. They finally found the device in the Great Seal carving, and Peter Wright, a British scientist and later MI5 counter-intelligence officer, eventually discovered how it worked:
“The Thing” consisted of a very thin membrane that sealed a chamber which had a mushroom shaped post that left a small gap between the membrane that was adjustable. The set up acted as a variable capacitor that changed capacitance with every movement of the membrane. This was in fact a condenser microphone similar to the one invented by Bell Laboratories in 1916.
Part of the design was a passive cavity resonator that became active only when a radio signal of a particular frequency was present. Sound waves made the membrane move, varied the capacitance of the circuit and thus the resonant frequency modulating the sound signal onto the carrier frequency in a way that made this early frequency modulated signal (FM) almost entirely undetectable at a time when almost all radio signals were amplitude modulated (AM).
And this is where most of the books have it wrong: Termen can definitely be credited for the design of “The Thing” but he was certainly not the first to come up with the idea. As Mr. Lee Shepard pointed out to me when researching the article, as early as 1916 US patent 2238117 was awarded to Winfield Koch at the Radio Corporation of America describing primarily frequency modulation as a principle but going further almost as a side note of the patent script.
A still further object of my invention is to provide means for modulating an ultra high frequency carrier without the application of electrical power.
"One feature of my invention is the extreme simplicity of the modulating means employed which modulates the oscillator frequency or amplitude by vibrations derived directly from sound waves, thus functioning as a combined modulator-microphone. The dual function is made practical by employing a concentric line modulator, since in such a case the outer member of the line and the microphone diaphragm are both maintained at ground potential, as will subsequently appear."
It is entirely unclear whether Termen was aware of Koch’s work or not when designing "The Thing", but the patent text closely resembles what he came up with and the Russian Boy Scouts shorthanded the ambassador.
When the device finally was found more by coincidence than by systematic counter-intelligence, the indignation on the side of the US was rather high. When the USSR shot down a US U2 spy plane over Russian territory, the UN Security Council convened to discuss and find resolutions regarding the matter. In order to demonstrate that spying was part of Cold War folklore and nothing to be upset about, the US ambassador the United Nations brought “The Thing” into the council meeting.
In a typical case of spy vs. spy, neither the Russians nor the Americans were much impressed with each other’s argument and continue to sniff each others proverbial underwear until present date. Whether Termen ever got involved again is not documented, but what is known is that Termen went on to live a long life.and survived both Glasnost and Perestroika to die in 1993 at the ripe old age of 97.
Arved Deecke is founder of the Danish / Mexican Loudspeaker company KVART & BØLGE that makes audiophile quarter wave loudspeakers and sound systems at a price anyone can afford. In his free time he blogs about all things related to sound, music and audio.
