Leon Theremin invents the theremin
Music from thin air: played without being touched
In October 1920 the physicist Lev Termen demonstrated an instrument whose pitch changes as the player's hands move near two antennas. In 1922 he was invited to the Kremlin, where Lenin himself tried to play Glinka's 'The Lark' on it. Termen later toured Europe and the USA with it.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Did you know
The inventor of the theremin also made one of the first bugs. In 1945 Soviet schoolchildren gave the US ambassador a carved Great Seal with Leon Theremin's listening device inside — and it hung in his Moscow office for seven years. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 6 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 2 years earlier
- 1920 League of Nations founded — same year
- 1939–1945 World War II — 19 years later
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — 25 years later
Europe
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 15 years earlier
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 1 year earlier
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 8 years later
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 13 years later
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 16 years later
Middle East
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 12 years earlier
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — 5 years earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 4 years earlier
- 1917 Balfour Declaration — 3 years earlier
- 1923 Treaty of Lausanne — 3 years later
Africa
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 23 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 16 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 2 years later
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 15 years later
Asia
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — 9 years earlier
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — 3 years later
- 1931 China floods — 11 years later
- 1934–1935 Long March — 14 years later
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 25 years later
Americas
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — 10 years earlier
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — 7 years earlier
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 6 years earlier
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — 6 years earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 9 years later
Oceania
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 9 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 8 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 16 years later
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 21 years later
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 22 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 73)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 64)
- Marie Curie (aged 53)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 51)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 50)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 49)
- Winston Churchill (aged 46)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 42)
- Albert Einstein (aged 41)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 39)