The Thing (listening device)
The Thing, also known as the Great Seal bug, was one of the first covert listening devices to use passive techniques to transmit an audio signal. It was concealed inside a gift given by the Soviet Union to W. Averell Harriman, the United States Ambassador to theSoviet Union, on August 4, 1945. Because it was passive, needing electromagnetic energy from an outside source to become energized and activate, it is considered a predecessor of radio-frequency identification technology.
About The Thing (listening device) in brief
The Thing, also known as the Great Seal bug, was one of the first covert listening devices to use passive techniques to transmit an audio signal. It was concealed inside a gift given by the Soviet Union to W. Averell Harriman, the United States Ambassador to theSoviet Union, on August 4, 1945. Because it was passive, needing electromagnetic energy from an outside source to become energized and activate, it is considered a predecessor of radio-frequency identification technology. The Thing consisted of a tiny capacitive membrane connected to a small quarter-wavelength antenna; it had no power supply or active electronic components. It hung in the ambassador’s Moscow residential study for seven years, until it was exposed in 1952 during the tenure of Ambassador George F. Kennan. The existence of the bug was discovered accidentally in 1951 by a British radio operator at the British embassy who overheard American conversations on an open air radio channel as the Soviets were beaming radio waves at the embassy.
The original device was located with the can under the beak of the eagle on the Great seal presented by W. Avereill Harrimans to Soviet President Joseph Stalin. The Soviets said to be using 330 MHz to concentrate the sound from the room onto the microphone. The illuminating frequency used by the Soviets to concentrate sound on the soundboard is said by some sources to be around 330 MHz. The device consisted of a 9-inch-long monopole antenna frequencies, but it was also able to act as half-wave or full-wave ; the accounts differ. It used a straight rod, led through an insulating bushing into a cavity, where it was terminated with a round disc that formed one plate of a capacitor.
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This page is based on the article The Thing (listening device) published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 13, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
