MI5 arranged for the Soviet ambassador in London to be given a model of the Palace of Westminster, hoping he would keep it on his desk. It was shaped exactly right to bounce back a radio wave from the outside so could be used as bug. Unfortunately it was made of silver so the Soviet ambassador sold it. MI5 bought it back from the pawn shop.
i also noticed! many people talked about it in a very "scientific" manner and until now i failed to grasp the idea of this bug. now it is crystal clear for me despite the lack of "technical details". and the brief exposure of the schematic is very helpful and spot on.
One thing i haven't seen many people discussing, it that it is highly unlikely this was the only "thing" ever produced. Theoretically, there could still be many things out there still doing what they do. I wonder what their shelf life is
The part that amazes me is that this was something Theremin was able to invent & create in the middle of WWII, when he was incarcerated, resources were scarce, & things were pretty chaotic. The entire story is also a good reminder or what actually happened to the USSR -- any political entity that continually shoots itself in both feet by incarcerating, executing or alienating its best & brightest citizens will not be able to endure, no matter what its economic system is supposed to be.
Soviet engineers never cease to amaze with what they can do. They pioneered radio technology, aircraft technology, submarine technology and space exploration. All while under the leadership of people like Stalin.
Always bothers me that people will shine a light on Nazi Germany for their atrocities, but seem to forget that the Soviets were just as brutal to their own citizens, if not more so.
This perfectly played out when Stalin collapsed just before his death. They had to round up off the streets what doctors were left. "Where are all the good doctors" is something uttered. "We locked them all up" was the answer.
Not to take anything away from Theremin but he didn't exactly work in a barren prison cell with only straw and paper available but rather in a government lab; so I think he had adequate equipment and resource he could work with.
When the NSA documents were leaked by Snowden, a similar device was shown in the documents for spying on analog computer monitors. It was a special RGB cable and you could use a transmitter tuned to the right frequency to get back modulated signals from one of the colors and recreating what the monitor was showing. Later on Leo Theremin made the first infrared microphone that works like the laser microphones in the movies that listen for the vibrations on the glass sheets.
That's very clever. I know a while ago lasers were used to pick up the acoustic resonance off windows like you were saying. Nowadays govts can just pay Oracle to use their spyware that is installed on nearly every device today lol
The U. S. Great Seal bug may be seen at the Cryptology Museum run by the NSA at Fort Meade. This is open to the public. They also keep an operable ENIGMA machine you can play with, and they have a fragment of Francis Gary Powers’ plane.
Just watched theramin playing the theramin. OH My! Visually it was freaky in 2023!! I can’t imagine what people would have thought back then! And the sound… So clear I could pick each note out in a chord. Haunting and beautiful at the same time. Once again, thank you Simon and crew for expanding my mind, and my ears..💕
NO ITS ONLY MEANT FOR ELECTRICUTION!!! jesus our man really was just beaten down all his life and still made by far the oddest yet most simplistic instrument on Earth
RFID is more like a wireless power device that then retransmits information while powered from an external power source. It's not very much like this in practice. There's no resonance involved. The similarity ends with the external power source.
RFID works in the near-field zone of a source, and works by changing the load on a receiving loop, so the transmitter "feels" the loading and can interpret the changes as a digital signal. It can also receive inbound modulated signals and rectifies the signal to power the chip in the RFID tag. The Great Seal Bug works by re-radiation in the far-field, so has no interaction with the transmitter, and needs a separate receiver which can ignore the transmitted signal. The EASYCHAIR Mk2 was very clever, it used the distant transmit signal to generate a little DC power for a transistor amplifier from a hearing-aid microphone. The audio signal was then used to control another transistor which applied a load to the detector/rectifier diode. That changed the amount of re-radiated signal from the antenna. I'm sourcing parts from the late 1950s to make the replica and I hope to get access to a real one soon to make sure mine is a faithful copy
Ah, but the plot thickens. Mr. Harriman, one of the most richest men in America at that time, was also an opportunist. He had businesses in Poland and Germany that were confinscated during the war. His skill and knack as a diplomat and negotiator were unparalleled. He was later accused by a Soviet defector of being a Russian spy. I don't necessarily think that was the case, but he could have received 'The thing' as a bargaining chip he could use to gain leverage for his may deals. Or maybe the unknown staffer was definitely maybe a Soviet agent? But then again, Harriman just randomly decided that it was too big to fit in his luggage? And during those years that the Soviets had ears in that embassy, relations between the two countries were cold but relatively stable. Was it really found by accident, or was a counter espionage agent involved? Either way, what followed soon after was the deterioration of relationships and the beginning of the Korean War. Someone should make a movie. The game is a foot, dear Watson.
I saw Fishbone 3-4 times. If you wanted to see a great band utilize that instrument, that was one of the only fantastic band using it correctly. Man, what an amazing band.
Theremin lived an amazing life. The is a very good documentary about him. I think it’s called “Theremin”. He got to reunite with Clara Rockmore just before he died.
A variation of the technical variant of theramine has another important application. It is used for precise measurement of the telescope mirror surface in the nanometer range
"Spaso House, a large new Empire Style mansion in Spasopeskovskaya Square in Moscow" Factboy never even tries to pronounce foreign words with the right accent...
3:20 Does anyone have a primary historical reference for the "repair" to a crack in the rim? One of the mysteries of the Bug is that the inside was modified in a rather amateurish way and in a hurry, possibly to install a replacement device, but none of the references I found could provide a definitive event when such a change might have happened. Was it during a refurbishment of the rooms in Spaso House in 1947 perhaps? I'd be most grateful for any documentary evidence
This really is an interesting gadget with a long legacy. A few days ago (presumably around the time this video came out by the looks of things) I was telling a friend about it in the context of its legacy and ingenuity. While he is not a history nerd, he is far from stupid and almost 40, yet had never heard of it. He was quite amazed. I honestly don't know if the relative obscurity of this device as well as both its history and legacy is a good or bad thing.
HEY SIMON! I remember you talking about in one of your [Business]Blaze videos how the ad reads are filmed separate of the videos and I wanted to comment you did a good job matching the collar turn on your shirt! After remembering this I decided to try to look for something off about it and I realized your have your sleeves pulled up more (and more wrinkles on your stage left arm) in the video than in the ad >:D Keep up the stellar work, Bromethius
I love this story! Saw it on another channel a few months ago. The channel creator made a version of this device for a BBC documentary . Now every time I use my Interac I think of Russia and the Theramin
@@RazvanTataroiu yes. I like the channel. Very technical, but the host is super intelligent and capable of explaining most of his topics to be accessible to a wide audience.
Simon and the team did an excellent job with this presentation apart from one or two minor slips like the date of the gift and the 1800 MHz frequency and the use of some old inaccurate images, but he is one of my favourite presenters. I'm now working on replicas of the EASYCHAIR Mk2 bug for a future video, and another based on the GUNMAN project where bugs were placed inside IBM typewriters.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves it’s great that this is getting more attention, and illustrating its importance in current technology. Kind of reminds me of James Burkes old series Connections. Also great that all these channels follow each other. Such a great community
@@PlayNowWorkLater The BBC repeated the episode where I appeared with Prof Hannah Fry last week, but they didn't show any of the detailed explanation in the broadcast. I'll be doing some much deeper dives into the tech later this year
Holy crap, what a great video! I've seen "The Thing" at the National Cryptologic Museum and later at the International Spy Museum, but there's so much I didn't know about it. And the Leon Theremin angle is just amazing! 🤓
NFC is more sophisticated, it relies on radio frequency powerful enough to run a small microcontroller which can then do all sorts of processing and bidirectional computing. That's how NFC credit cards are able to be secure - they don't give up their keys, they just generate tokens that allow them to be used once
"I am I said to no one there/but no one heard at all, not even the chair". What Neil Diamond didn't know was that the sofa was listening with rapt attention and the ottoman was secretly communicating with its Turkish masters.
8:41 - "device for measuring the dialectic properties of gases" Are you sure you mean "dialectic" and not "dielectric"? In classical philosophy, dialectic is a form of reasoning based upon dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments, advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses). It is difficult for gases to engage in dialectic.
They are now. But it was the 1940s and 50s. My understanding is that windows can also be scanned to pick up sound vibrations from conversations within. So you really need to be in an interior space. Further, you need computers to be air-gapped to the rest of the world, and you need to be really careful about things like USB sticks, so that viruses don't ride along.
I'd heard about the listening device many years ago but not about how it was powered, and certainly not that it was the invention of Theremin (although as a teen in the 60s I had plans for a home made theremin from a magazine). And you final comment that the same tech is used for RFID tags puts another question to bed. I could never figure out how those little metal networks had space for a battery.
Nice irregular English bond masonry. Oh… and very interesting well-told story. It was a little amusing that the reveal of the connection to RFID technology only came as the credits were being rolled.
"Sharashka" is not a name of some secret research center. Its slang term for government facilities then and shady business now. Your writer`s source was trying to throw shade on the place where Theremin worked, not name it.
Radio is part of thd electroMAGNETIC spectrum... The clue is in the name 😉.... Amplitude (power) determines the propagation (distance the waves travel). Near Field is low amplitude, hence "near field",you have to be within the range of propagation
@@BooBaddyBig Radio-frequency identification uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. *An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder, a radio receiver and transmitter*
C'mon now!! Simon-- how can you not mention the use of the theremin on the original Star Trek series?? That's what most people think and remember most of Theremin's contribution to society. Besides the seal bug. EDIT: I stand corrected. My apologies. I must've had a brain misfire the day I wrote the comment above. Should have said 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still. Thanks for letting me know about my mistake.
I remember watching him play his Theremin on our black and white t.v. in, I would guess the 1960's. I have a circuit diagram for a valved RCA model I would like to make.
10:02 Simon says (what sounded to me like) "Buttercup Prison" , the autosubs said "Butcher Prison" - what was the actual name? it can't have been either.
Unfortunately, my understanding is that they're quite more fickle than that, and you need to recalibrate it every time you use it by twisting some knobs on it
Incredible performance of the engineer. We don't know exactly what impact this inclusion had. But it may have prevented a nuclear war during the Cold War.
That American Ambassador was very naive. And which of his staff thought is was a good idea to take an item of unknown provenance and hang it in a supposedly secure area?
2:26 NKVD and KGB are different agencies until ww2 NKVD was internal, while NKGB was external intelligence after Stalin's death reshuffling left with only NKGB, with its first letter getting dropped soon
Dam well I'm sure u know, prolly not much can be done, but I'm subscribed to all ur channels thought I was caught up on all your vids been watching 2 yrs + but I just realized I basically never gotten. Any of your vids from like 2 ur channels in my feed idk I figured I jus throw it out there incase it help
The Soviets/Russians military prowess sucks, but you can’t deny their spycraft is second only to Mossad. But, as ever, it’s only as good as the leaders who use it.
Click the link in the description box or go to buyraycon.com/brainfood to get 15% off your Raycon purchase!
Love Your work🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Hey good luck deleting the comments, raycon is still a scam tho
@TodayIFoundOut (his story ,not ours ) can you make a video about these buildings please
No Simon, not you too! Not Ray's con! 😳
Video starts at 1:14
MI5 arranged for the Soviet ambassador in London to be given a model of the Palace of Westminster, hoping he would keep it on his desk. It was shaped exactly right to bounce back a radio wave from the outside so could be used as bug. Unfortunately it was made of silver so the Soviet ambassador sold it. MI5 bought it back from the pawn shop.
First mistake, thinking a Soviet official wanted a gift representing a monarchy. Bet if it was the Kremlin it would've made it on the desk.
_so the Soviet ambassador sold it_
Russia never changes.
It's so secret story that I couldn't find anything in the whole Internet. Are you that MI5 member?
@@alexbork4250 The anecdote comes from _Spycatcher_ by Peter Wright.
I’m an RF engineer. This is the best explanation of the bug I’ve seen. Thank you!
i also noticed! many people talked about it in a very "scientific" manner and until now i failed to grasp the idea of this bug. now it is crystal clear for me despite the lack of "technical details". and the brief exposure of the schematic is very helpful and spot on.
Machining and Microwaves had a longer explanation of the similar quality.
One thing i haven't seen many people discussing, it that it is highly unlikely this was the only "thing" ever produced. Theoretically, there could still be many things out there still doing what they do. I wonder what their shelf life is
They’d probably be functional indefinitely, but we have better detection technology these days and it would be noticed very quickly.
They are powered by external radio waves of a specific frequency ...
Havanna Syndrome
"electricity is to be used for electrocution", a kind of sentence that could only be said by a soviet bureaucrat at the Lubyanka
In mother Russia... You don't play electricity, electricity plays you.
Also something any Republican says in 2023 capitalist America.
The part that amazes me is that this was something Theremin was able to invent & create in the middle of WWII, when he was incarcerated, resources were scarce, & things were pretty chaotic. The entire story is also a good reminder or what actually happened to the USSR -- any political entity that continually shoots itself in both feet by incarcerating, executing or alienating its best & brightest citizens will not be able to endure, no matter what its economic system is supposed to be.
Soviet engineers never cease to amaze with what they can do. They pioneered radio technology, aircraft technology, submarine technology and space exploration. All while under the leadership of people like Stalin.
Always bothers me that people will shine a light on Nazi Germany for their atrocities, but seem to forget that the Soviets were just as brutal to their own citizens, if not more so.
@@Outrider74Yep. Stalin’s gulag death toll exceeded Hitler’s final solution. Stalin’s standing was then superseded by Mao.
This perfectly played out when Stalin collapsed just before his death. They had to round up off the streets what doctors were left. "Where are all the good doctors" is something uttered. "We locked them all up" was the answer.
Not to take anything away from Theremin but he didn't exactly work in a barren prison cell with only straw and paper available but rather in a government lab; so I think he had adequate equipment and resource he could work with.
When the NSA documents were leaked by Snowden, a similar device was shown in the documents for spying on analog computer monitors. It was a special RGB cable and you could use a transmitter tuned to the right frequency to get back modulated signals from one of the colors and recreating what the monitor was showing. Later on Leo Theremin made the first infrared microphone that works like the laser microphones in the movies that listen for the vibrations on the glass sheets.
Interesting
That's very clever. I know a while ago lasers were used to pick up the acoustic resonance off windows like you were saying. Nowadays govts can just pay Oracle to use their spyware that is installed on nearly every device today lol
There are bass guitars with optical pickups working on this same principle .lightwave pickups
The U. S. Great Seal bug may be seen at the Cryptology Museum run by the NSA at Fort Meade. This is open to the public. They also keep an operable ENIGMA machine you can play with, and they have a fragment of Francis Gary Powers’ plane.
☕
i may want to travel down there so i can play with the machine
@NoahGooder interesting pfp
Just watched theramin playing the theramin. OH My! Visually it was freaky in 2023!! I can’t imagine what people would have thought back then! And the sound…
So clear I could pick each note out in a chord. Haunting and beautiful at the same time.
Once again, thank you Simon and crew for expanding my mind, and my ears..💕
NO ITS ONLY MEANT FOR ELECTRICUTION!!! jesus our man really was just beaten down all his life and still made by far the oddest yet most simplistic instrument on Earth
The song "Good Vibrations" uses a theramin for the repeating high pitched notes throughout the song.
Sheldon cooper plays the theremin in The Big Bang Theory 😊
Really ....
I remember seeing him play on our black and white t.v. I guess in the 1960's.
I have heard of this device before but thank you for the great detail on how it came to be.
Love your vids. Info packed and stimulating; with zero pause, even between sentences. This would've baffled any early listening device.
Damn what a bombshell to drop that this lead to RFID. I am thorough impressed even though I was already impressed to begin with.
*led
RFID is more like a wireless power device that then retransmits information while powered from an external power source. It's not very much like this in practice. There's no resonance involved. The similarity ends with the external power source.
Except RFID is an RF powered microchip, NOT a resonant chamber.
RFID works in the near-field zone of a source, and works by changing the load on a receiving loop, so the transmitter "feels" the loading and can interpret the changes as a digital signal. It can also receive inbound modulated signals and rectifies the signal to power the chip in the RFID tag. The Great Seal Bug works by re-radiation in the far-field, so has no interaction with the transmitter, and needs a separate receiver which can ignore the transmitted signal. The EASYCHAIR Mk2 was very clever, it used the distant transmit signal to generate a little DC power for a transistor amplifier from a hearing-aid microphone. The audio signal was then used to control another transistor which applied a load to the detector/rectifier diode. That changed the amount of re-radiated signal from the antenna. I'm sourcing parts from the late 1950s to make the replica and I hope to get access to a real one soon to make sure mine is a faithful copy
Ah, but the plot thickens. Mr. Harriman, one of the most richest men in America at that time, was also an opportunist. He had businesses in Poland and Germany that were confinscated during the war. His skill and knack as a diplomat and negotiator were unparalleled. He was later accused by a Soviet defector of being a Russian spy. I don't necessarily think that was the case, but he could have received 'The thing' as a bargaining chip he could use to gain leverage for his may deals. Or maybe the unknown staffer was definitely maybe a Soviet agent? But then again, Harriman just randomly decided that it was too big to fit in his luggage? And during those years that the Soviets had ears in that embassy, relations between the two countries were cold but relatively stable. Was it really found by accident, or was a counter espionage agent involved? Either way, what followed soon after was the deterioration of relationships and the beginning of the Korean War. Someone should make a movie. The game is a foot, dear Watson.
It's 'the game is afoot'. 'The game is a foot' might be a Tarantino quote, rather than Holmes.
🦶
@@danielguy3581😂
Yeah
3 wives, no alimony. Lived to 97. He had a good life. Except for that gulag part.
But even then he got to explore his passion.
Sodomy?
I saw Fishbone 3-4 times. If you wanted to see a great band utilize that instrument, that was one of the only fantastic band using it correctly. Man, what an amazing band.
Theremin lived an amazing life. The is a very good documentary about him. I think it’s called “Theremin”. He got to reunite with Clara Rockmore just before he died.
Damn, Simon!! That's some 0:42 Lycra Magic!!
More ads like that, please!!
8:43 "measuring the dialectic properties of gasses" 😂
Very on topic gaffe
A variation of the technical variant of theramine has another important application. It is used for precise measurement of the telescope mirror surface in the nanometer range
Awesome you’re covering this thing today, such a cool invention, gotta give the guy credit
This bug (and it being in the seal) is a favourite spy story.
2:01 excuse me? That sounded like one of those language generators
"Spaso House, a large new Empire Style mansion in Spasopeskovskaya Square in Moscow"
Factboy never even tries to pronounce foreign words with the right accent...
Came here to say as much 😂😂😂
"mossko"
Riiiiiiiight!! That made me snort
@@frogz There is no cow in Moscow.
Video starts at 1:14
Beware of geeks bearing gifts.
Russians*
Or if you're important. Trust nobody. Don't even trust yourself. Don't even trust me.
Definitely beware geeks. They’ve destroyed society over the past two decades.
Nice classical (mis)reference.
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
3:20 Does anyone have a primary historical reference for the "repair" to a crack in the rim? One of the mysteries of the Bug is that the inside was modified in a rather amateurish way and in a hurry, possibly to install a replacement device, but none of the references I found could provide a definitive event when such a change might have happened. Was it during a refurbishment of the rooms in Spaso House in 1947 perhaps? I'd be most grateful for any documentary evidence
I'm sure there's a similar device in The Blazement that allows Simon to listen in on the conversations of his "guests".
I used to have a theremin. Never quite mastered the Star Trek theme song tho.
This really is an interesting gadget with a long legacy. A few days ago (presumably around the time this video came out by the looks of things) I was telling a friend about it in the context of its legacy and ingenuity. While he is not a history nerd, he is far from stupid and almost 40, yet had never heard of it. He was quite amazed.
I honestly don't know if the relative obscurity of this device as well as both its history and legacy is a good or bad thing.
HEY SIMON! I remember you talking about in one of your [Business]Blaze videos how the ad reads are filmed separate of the videos and I wanted to comment you did a good job matching the collar turn on your shirt! After remembering this I decided to try to look for something off about it and I realized your have your sleeves pulled up more (and more wrinkles on your stage left arm) in the video than in the ad >:D
Keep up the stellar work, Bromethius
I love this story! Saw it on another channel a few months ago. The channel creator made a version of this device for a BBC documentary . Now every time I use my Interac I think of Russia and the Theramin
Machining and Microwaves is the channel for those interested; it's quite technical.
@@RazvanTataroiu yes. I like the channel. Very technical, but the host is super intelligent and capable of explaining most of his topics to be accessible to a wide audience.
Simon and the team did an excellent job with this presentation apart from one or two minor slips like the date of the gift and the 1800 MHz frequency and the use of some old inaccurate images, but he is one of my favourite presenters. I'm now working on replicas of the EASYCHAIR Mk2 bug for a future video, and another based on the GUNMAN project where bugs were placed inside IBM typewriters.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves it’s great that this is getting more attention, and illustrating its importance in current technology. Kind of reminds me of James Burkes old series Connections. Also great that all these channels follow each other. Such a great community
@@PlayNowWorkLater The BBC repeated the episode where I appeared with Prof Hannah Fry last week, but they didn't show any of the detailed explanation in the broadcast. I'll be doing some much deeper dives into the tech later this year
Holy crap, what a great video! I've seen "The Thing" at the National Cryptologic Museum and later at the International Spy Museum, but there's so much I didn't know about it. And the Leon Theremin angle is just amazing! 🤓
9:19 the theme for Star Trek was from his instrument 😊
Now that's "out of the box" thinking
This has been one of my favorite stories for year. I'm currently working on RFID/NFC stuff for a homemade game.
NFC is more sophisticated, it relies on radio frequency powerful enough to run a small microcontroller which can then do all sorts of processing and bidirectional computing. That's how NFC credit cards are able to be secure - they don't give up their keys, they just generate tokens that allow them to be used once
wow. ive read about the bug before, of course, but i didn't realise Mr 'ooohhhh eeee uuuu ooooo' theremin was involved. brilliant
"I am I said to no one there/but no one heard at all, not even the chair". What Neil Diamond didn't know was that the sofa was listening with rapt attention and the ottoman was secretly communicating with its Turkish masters.
8:41 - "device for measuring the dialectic properties of gases"
Are you sure you mean "dialectic" and not "dielectric"?
In classical philosophy, dialectic is a form of reasoning based upon dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments, advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses). It is difficult for gases to engage in dialectic.
Excellent video, Simon! 🎉😊
I'm pretty surprised those rooms for the highest diplomats aren't Faraday shielded.
They are now. But it was the 1940s and 50s.
My understanding is that windows can also be scanned to pick up sound vibrations from conversations within. So you really need to be in an interior space.
Further, you need computers to be air-gapped to the rest of the world, and you need to be really careful about things like USB sticks, so that viruses don't ride along.
I'd heard about the listening device many years ago but not about how it was powered, and certainly not that it was the invention of Theremin (although as a teen in the 60s I had plans for a home made theremin from a magazine). And you final comment that the same tech is used for RFID tags puts another question to bed. I could never figure out how those little metal networks had space for a battery.
That Raycon ad tho
Even though I knew what the final punchline world be, I still found this quite interesting
Nice irregular English bond masonry.
Oh… and very interesting well-told story. It was a little amusing that the reveal of the connection to RFID technology only came as the credits were being rolled.
I love the endo-vibrator!
"Sharashka" is not a name of some secret research center. Its slang term for government facilities then and shady business now.
Your writer`s source was trying to throw shade on the place where Theremin worked, not name it.
That's freaking SLICK! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
That is surprisingly bad. I'm surprised I never heard of this before.
10:05 he was sent to "Sharashka".
It's in Moscow, the building they were placed in is a museum now, and my friend works there.
Second British presenter to cover this device on youtube.
I thought I was having a stroke when he said Spasopeskovskaya Square 😅
This episode managed to surprise me, what with the device itself and that it was developed by Leon Theremin. Good stuff.
can we get a Theramin boigraphics video? This dude's life sounds super interesting.
Although in a sense we did. He was amazing and all I knew was the Theramin.
... and there was me thinking it was Peter Wright that worked out how "The Thing" worked!
That is surprisingly similar to modern condenser microphones.
OMG the physics hasn't changed!
Most RFID tags and wireless scanners are near field purely magnetic devices rather than radio though.
Radio is part of thd electroMAGNETIC spectrum... The clue is in the name 😉....
Amplitude (power) determines the propagation (distance the waves travel). Near Field is low amplitude, hence "near field",you have to be within the range of propagation
@@Rachel_M_ Nope. There's a subtle difference between RADIO FREQUENCY and RADIO. Near field isn't radio. Radio is far field.
@@BooBaddyBig RFID = Radio Frequency Identification.
@@BooBaddyBig Radio-frequency identification uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. *An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder, a radio receiver and transmitter*
@@BooBaddyBig might be wise if you also look up "induction"
For those who have watched Midsomer Murders, you are very familiar with the use of the Theramin in the theme song.
What a character, what a life!
Amazing!
Genuinely interesting. At last!
I have gotten myself a pair of raycons from a friend, I like them, but I think I need better fitting plugs, but that on me for not changing them 😂
C'mon now!! Simon-- how can you not mention the use of the theremin on the original Star Trek series?? That's what most people think and remember most of Theremin's contribution to society.
Besides the seal bug.
EDIT: I stand corrected. My apologies. I must've had a brain misfire the day I wrote the comment above. Should have said 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Thanks for letting me know about my mistake.
… also earlier in the classic SciFi film ‘Forbidden Planet’…. 1956…
Well, they can forget again, the theremin wasn't used
@@ericjohnson9468 ... nor was it used in the 1956 movie "Forbidden Planet"
Love your content 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Hey Simon have u done a documentary on the Darien gap
That device was genius!! --- Anytime I think I'm smart, I just need to watch a video by Simon and I realize how average I really am.
I feel the same way. Not to mention this idea was thought up in the 1940's, almost 100 years ago - what have scientists thought of since then?
Thought the outcome would be that Russia is listening to us all through our oven igniter switch
WOW ! that's how those tags work !! I never could understnad how they worked without a battery.
I remember watching him play his Theremin on our black and white t.v. in, I would guess the 1960's. I have a circuit diagram for a valved RCA model I would like to make.
Do you think that Simon really knows anything about Ray J???😂😂😂
10:02 Simon says (what sounded to me like) "Buttercup Prison" , the autosubs said "Butcher Prison" - what was the actual name? it can't have been either.
I do have a old Theremin for sale. Never been used. Completely untouched by human hands.
Spot the contradiction.
I once saw an ad for a parachute and it said "Used once, never opened."
@@KosstAmojan Bingo!! LOL!😁
Unfortunately, my understanding is that they're quite more fickle than that, and you need to recalibrate it every time you use it by twisting some knobs on it
@@supersat Indeed. All electronic instruments need periodic maintenance and calibration.
Incredible performance of the engineer. We don't know exactly what impact this inclusion had. But it may have prevented a nuclear war during the Cold War.
That American Ambassador was very naive. And which of his staff thought is was a good idea to take an item of unknown provenance and hang it in a supposedly secure area?
The coolest TIFO episode yet.
Note for simon’s video editor. For the love of all that is holy use a deesser on his microphone. It’s brutal
11:21 What?
WOW! That is amazing stuff.
Brilliant, as usual!
Completely off topic but what is that watch you are wearing?
2:26 NKVD and KGB are different agencies
until ww2 NKVD was internal, while NKGB was external intelligence
after Stalin's death reshuffling left with only NKGB, with its first letter getting dropped soon
Perfect Synchronicity.....
Where would old SiFy movies and horror films be without Theremin's inventions?
Today we have Siri that monitors all our conversations.
Why is it that metal detectors could not detect this silver/copper cylinder? Or the antenna?
How many channels does Simon have anyway?
I wish I have an emoji (a shocking) of Gen Asagiri (from Dr. Stone).
Is the Havana syndrome caused by something similar?
Dam well I'm sure u know, prolly not much can be done, but I'm subscribed to all ur channels thought I was caught up on all your vids been watching 2 yrs + but I just realized I basically never gotten. Any of your vids from like 2 ur channels in my feed idk I figured I jus throw it out there incase it help
The Soviets/Russians military prowess sucks, but you can’t deny their spycraft is second only to Mossad. But, as ever, it’s only as good as the leaders who use it.
Came for the movie plot
Stayed for the Simon rambles
Peter Wright of MI5 was asked by the CIA to help reverse engineer "the Thing."
*If they ever make a movie about this the soundtrack should have Therimins.*
Ad-related, but the fact that Raycon on Wikipedia redirects to Ray_J with literally two sentences about the company seems extremely suspicious TBH.
Termen knew: When Stalin asks you to invent the perfect bug, he only asks once.
Look at that - you put credits to the people who helped you make your fourth video of the day! Thank you,
Theremin was a genius and this is one of the most successful espionage operations of all time.
This doesn't need to be said, but Theremin was BRILLIANT.
There’s a great video with an engineering guy making one of these
Ive seen this! Its at the spy museum in DC
there is a channel that hand made one of these devices, i forget their name though.
Hi!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves yep, tag, youre it
Theremin, Bob Moog sold theremins before starting his synthesizer company.
Best twist in this story.
The Bug was invented by Leo Theremin.