In 1928, the Russian inventor Lev Sergeyevich Termen – known in the west as Léon Theremin – demonstrated a shockingly futuristic new sound during a performance with the New York Philharmonic. When he patented it later that year, it was dubbed the “theremin”: an electronic instrument that could make music literally out of thin air. Termen, a gifted scientist who had built his own home laboratory by the age of 17, had used his knowledge of electromagnetic fields to build a portable instrument consisting of two oscillators and two antennae.

By moving his hands between the antennae, he conjured up ghostly, quivering tones that sounded like alien communications – an effect later used by the Beach Boys on ‘Good Vibrations’ (although on an updated version of the instrument, the Electro-Theremin). But the theremin wasn’t only admired for its radical new sound. Termen had been sent abroad not only to show off his new invention, but to gather information on the latest developments in American industrial technology.

When he returned to the Soviet Union in 1938, he was accused of being a counter-revolutionary and imprisoned – but rather than being left to rot in a Gulag, he was brought to Moscow to develop bugging devices used to spy on foreign embassies. One listening device, called The Thing, was hidden in a gift presented to the U.S. ambassador in 1945 by a group of schoolchildren. The device intercepted private conversations in the ambassador’s office for seven years until it was accidentally discovered.

• Chal Ravens