The Thing, also known as the Great Seal bug, was one of the first covert listening devices (or "bugs") 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 the Soviet Union, on August 4, 1945.

The Committee for State Security (Russian: Комитет государственной безопасности, romanized: Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, IPA: [kəmʲɪˈtʲed ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn (ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ]), abbreviated as KGB (Russian: КГБ, IPA: [ˌkɛɡɛˈbɛ]; listen to both ⓘ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991.

In 1945, a group of Soviet children visited the US Embassy in Moscow and gave the Ambassador a hand-carved Great Seal of the US. It stayed in his office until 1952... when technicians discovered a remarkable listening device inside. This Great Seal replica (ca. 2000) is based on a 1945 KGB creation.

The Great Seal Bug, also known as The Thing, was a passive covert listening device (bug), in­ven­ted during WWII in the Soviet Union (USSR) by Léon Theremin (Russian: Термен) and planted in the study of the US Ambassador in Moscow, hidden inside a wooden carving of the Great Seal of the United States.

2016年6月21日 · In 1946, a group of Russian children from the Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organisation (sort of a Soviet scouting group) presented a carved wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United...

In what can only be described as a late 1940s Trojan Horse, the listening device – commonly referred to as a ‘bug’ – was disguised in a wooden carving of the Great Seal of the United States and in 1945 was presented to then-U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, W. Averell Harriman, as a gift to their one-time WWII ally.

2015年12月8日 · The great seal bug quickly became known as “The Thing”. It was a passive resonant cavity device, containing no batteries or other power source. It consisted of an antenna and a small cylinder.

1987年4月13日 · Suddenly one snatched a wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States from the wall and smashed it open.

The KGB compact seal is made of a rubber elastomer, two back-up rings and two wear rings. The central elastomer in rubber working as a seal, the Z-shaped wear rings between which is also anti-extrusion rings protect the elastomer from being twisted and extruded.

You receive exactly the item you see in the photo.