Cold War Inventions: USSR (Theremin, Pobedit, Artificial Heart)

Here is a list of some very important and/or interesting inventions created in the Soviet Union, showing some innovations from the early USSR:

• Theremin: the theremin is a electronical musical instrument that can be controlled without physical contact & played by moving your hands in electromagnetic fields surround two antennae on the instrument. It was invented by Soviet inventor Leon Theremin and was one of the first electronic musical instruments to be mass-produced. He created the device in 1920 in the Russian Soviet Republic. Leon moved to the United States and patented his invention in 1928, where he displayed the Theremin in concert halls. Theremin left the United States in 1938 and people though he was captured by the KGB and taken back to the USSR. However, according to the book Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage, he simply went back to the USSR to escape some personal debt he had racked up. Leon would not return to the United States until the USSR's collapse in 1991. This invention by a Russian was very popular in the West and has been featured in many movies, including Spellbound (1945), The Thing From Another World (1951), The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), and The Ten Commandments (1956).

• Pobedit: Pobedit is a type of cemented carbide material that is close to the hardness of diamond with a 85 to 90 on the Rockwell scale: a scale for the indentation hardness of a material. It also has a wear resistance of 0.5 to 0.6 milligrams per square millimeter. It was made from a monocarbide with 90% tungsten and 10% cobalt. It was developed by the Soviet Union in 1929. This alloy was used for drawing tools, cutting tools, and drill bits. Soviet industry fabricated about 7000 tons of this material a year. Similar cemented carbides are still used today in the production of tools, including drill bits in modern Russia.

  

• Artificial heart: In 1937, the world's first artificial heart was invented by Vladimir P. Demikhov. The heart was successfully implanted into a dog which survived for two hours after the surgery. Description of the artificial heart and procedure was published in April 1938 in the student papers of Voronezh State University - a university Demikhov studied at which was established in 1918 by students and professors moved to the city of Voronezh. This device eventually led to the more advanced artificial hearts we have today to implant in people with heart problems or dealing with cardiac organ failure.