The original Theremin, with a foot pedal to control volume and a switch mechanism to control pitch, was invented during World War One – in 1917, to be exact – in St Petersburg, Russia.

It was named after its inventor, a young cellist and physics student, Lev Sergeivitch Termen. (It was also known as the Aetherophone or Etherphone, meaning "sound from the ether").

Lev Termen "playing" the RCA Theremin, first produced in 1929.

Termen’s life story is a kaleidoscope of intrigue itself. After demonstrating and playing his device throughout Russia and Europe (Lenin was said to have been very impressed), he travelled to the USA in 1927 and decided to stay, and married... much later, it was claimed he was in the US as a Russian spy.

But in 1938 he was kidnapped by the Russian NKVD (which later became the KGB) and clandestinely spirited back to Russia, where he was sentenced to a Siberian labour camp for "anti-Soviet propaganda".

After his "rehabilitation", he apparently again found favour with Russian authorities and taught at the Moscow Music Conservatory up until his death in 1993, aged 97.

In his later years he was again allowed to travel to the USA where he was introduced to the Beach Boys, who themselves made the Theremin famous in one of the most famous tracks of all time – Good Vibrations.

We’ve immortalised Lev to some degree (who incidentally was known in the west under the Gallic form of his name, Léon Théremin) by including a stylised image of him on the front panel of our design!

The Theremin version we know today, using a volume plate and pitch antenna, was developed and first produced in 1920. A commercial Theremin was built by RCA in 1929 and comprised a large wooden box to house the valve electronics and included the volume plate (actually a wire loop) and pitch antenna.