The mother of invention

The saying goes that necessity is the mother of invention, but in the Cold War fear drove people on both sides of the iron curtain to push the limits of science and come up with new inventions and technologies that changed the world. Here’s a selection of some of my favourites that crop up in RED CORONA...

Corona

The Corona programme may seem like science fiction, but it was completely real. Developed by NASA and the CIA, and codenamed Discoverer, it represented the cutting edge of Cold War surveillance technology. One hundred launches took place between the programme’s inaugural attempt in 1959 and its final mission in 1973. And despite initial problems with exploding rockets, lost capsules and malfunctioning cameras it became the mainstay of America’s orbital reconnaissance capabilities throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, outlasting several similar and even more advanced programmes.

Zenit

The Soviet Union’s own version of Corona, Zenit (codenamed Kosmos), came into service two years after Corona’s first launch, but considerably outlasted its US equivalent. Five hundred Zenit satellites were launched during its thirty-three year long operational history between 1961 and 1994. While Corona return capsules only contained photographic film, Zenit’s pressurised and temperature-controlled capsules carried its film and camera equipment back to Earth so it could be re-used on subsequent missions.

The U2

The precursor to today’s drones, the U2 was America’s untouchable, unstoppable spy plane, until one got shot down over Russia on May 1st 1960. When Khrushchev blew apart the American’s hastily constructed cover story that the U2 was a NASA research plane by producing its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, Kennedy shut down the entire programme. The incident rumbled on for almost two years until Powers was exchanged for Soviet spy Rudolph Abel on the famous Bridge of Spies in February 1962. Read more about Powers’ one man butterfly effect.

BIOS-3

If you want to travel through the vastness of space, or survive a nuclear apocalypse, you need somewhere safe and secure to live in. Somewhere that was also hermetically sealed but wouldn’t run out of oxygen. Or food. Or water. BIOS-3 was a self-contained ecosystem designed by Sergei Korolev, chief designer of the Soviet space programme, intended to help people make the journey to Mars or ride out the end of the world. Although it never got off the ground literally, it was used for isolation experiments until at least the mid 1980s.

Kupriyanovich’s mobile phone

Motorola invented the first mobile phone in 1973. At least the first western mobile phone. Leonid Kupriyanovich was a Soviet army engineer who specialised in radio communication and in 1957 he patented a prototype mobile phone. Over the next couple of years he refined his mobile phone design and by 1961 had built a version that weighed just 70g and could transmit over an 80km range. Kupriyanovich’s research led to the development of the Altai semi-mobile 0G phone network that spread across Russia between 1963-1965.

‘The Thing’

‘The Thing’ is a story of immense cunning and charming naivety. It’s also pretty much where the Cold War begins. In a gesture of post-war goodwill, the Young Pioneers - basically Soviet Cub Scouts - presented the American ambassador to the Soviet Union with a giant wooden carving of the Great Seal of the United States. The ambassador graciously accepted it and hung it in the study of his house in Moscow. And it remained there until 1952 when the Americans finally realised that a bug had been hidden inside it, listening to all their secrets for seven years. Bonus fact: ‘The Thing’ was invented by Leon Theremin - yes, that Theremin!