You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend

or disbelieve.

American Monski.

The 1951 film The Day the Earth stood still has so many iconic things about it.

Like the scene where the flying saucer lands in Washington, DC, and the robot Gort walks

down the ramp and he disintegrates the military's weapons with his I-beam.

And there's the famous speech by the alien character Klotu where he says that we Earth

lings are playing with technology beyond our control and putting the universe in danger,

which in the 1950s meant atomic bombs.

It's classic Cold War sci-fi.

But what makes this movie really of its time is the use of the Theraman, that weird

vibrating sound, which is part of the musical score.

The Theraman was the first electronic instrument and even today it looks like a prop from a sci-fi

movie.

The base is a rectangular box with two metal poles.

One pole sticks up straight like an antenna, actually is an antenna.

The other pole, just out to the side, and curves around like a hook.

Musicians move their fingers in the space between the poles, and it looks like they're

plucking invisible strings, but they're actually manipulating the energy inside an electromagnetic

field.

It is mesmerizing to what anyone plays it.

And as I delve deeper into the history of this instrument, I learned that there's an

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