My reader notes how a potential signaling mechanism for NASA’s Venus automaton resembles another device from a previous era:
The Russians did something similar during the cold war. A mechanical bug (passive resonator) was placed in an artwork and used to eavesdrop on the US ambassador’s office. http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1274748
From the EE Times article:
While there are a great many myths about when and where the bug was most famously deployed, the NSA provides a definitive history. From the NSA web site:
“On August 4, 1945, Soviet school children gave a carving of the Great Seal of the United States to U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman. It hung in the ambassador’s Moscow residential office until 1952 when the State Department discovered that it was ‘bugged.’
The microphone hidden inside was passive and only activated when the Soviets wanted it to be. They shot radio waves from a van parked outside into the ambassador’s office and could then detect the changes of the microphone’s diaphragm inside the resonant cavity. When Soviets turned off the radio waves it was virtually impossible to detect the hidden ‘bug.’ The Soviets were able to eavesdrop on the U.S. ambassador’s conversations for six years.”
The existence of the bug was accidentally discovered by a British Radio Operator when he heard conversations on an open radio channel.
I found particularly interesting the fact that the whole scheme was dreamed up by Leon Theremin, inventor of the theremin[1] and prisoner in the “… prison camp/gold mine of Kolyma.” Because of the Stalinist purges depleted the technical ranks, Theremin was recruited out of the camp.
The value of a device undetectable when inactive is hard to over-estimate. I wonder how much valuable intelligence was gathered, and could have been gathered but for the BRO, through this fiendish device.
And if we have a way to detect the damn thing these days. Trick me once …
1If you’re a Star Trek fan and think the lead-in music was done on a theremin, shame on you. The theremin-like sound was provided by Loulie Jean Norman.
