The Theremin's Strange Life

In 1920, inside the Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute in Soviet Russia, physicist and cellist Lev Termen was developing proximity sensors for the government. He was not trying to make music. His equipment, built with vacuum tube technology, was designed to react to movement. As he worked, he noticed that the electrical capacitance of his own body interfered with an electromagnetic field when he moved his hands near his test devices. This interference produced an audible electronic tone. Instead of seeing it as a problem, Termen saw potential. He realized this effect could be controlled. He built a wooden cabinet, attaching a vertical metal rod antenna on the right and a horizontal loop antenna on the left. By moving one hand closer to the vertical rod, he could raise the musical pitch. By moving the other hand near the horizontal loop, he could adjust the volume. He had created a new way to generate sound, an instrument you could play without ever touching it. He called his invention the etherphone, or termenvox. The world came to know it by his Westernized name: the theremin.