He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1952. When he was a boy, Moog's parents forced him to study the piano, but he preferred spending his time in the workroom of his father, a Consolidated Edison engineer. He became fascinated by the theremin, an electronic instrument controlled by moving the hands over radio antennae. In 1949, aged 14, he built a theremin from plans printed in Electronics World. Moog received a Bachelor of Science in physics from Queens College of the City University of New York and a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science under a 3-2 engineering program in 1957. He earned a PhD in engineering physics from Cornell University in 1965. Career RA Moog In 1953, Moog produced his own theremin design, and the following year he published an article on the theremin in Radio and Television News. In the same year, he founded RA Moog, selling theremins and theremin kits by mail order from his home as he completed his education. One of his customers, Raymond Scott, rewired Moog's theremin for control by keyboard, creating the Clavivox. Moog synthesizer At Cornell, Moog began work on his first synthesizer components with the composer Herb Deutsch. At the time, synthesizers were enormous, room-filling instruments; Moog hoped to build a more compact synthesizer that would appeal to musicians. He believed that practicality and affordability were the most important parameters. In 1964, Moog began creating the Moog synthesizer. It was composed of separate modules which created and shaped sounds, connected by patch cords. Previous synthesizers, such as the RCA Mark II, had created sound from hundreds of vacuum tubes. Instead, Moog used recently available silicon transistors — specifically, transistors with an exponential relationship between input voltage and output current. With these, he created the voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), which generated a waveform whose pitch could be adjusted by changing the voltage. Similarly, he used voltage to control loudness with voltage-controlled amplifiers (VCAs). One innovative feature was its envelope, which controlled how notes swell and fade. According to the Guardian, Moog's 1964 paper Voltage-Controlled Music Modules, in which he proposed the Moog synthesizer modules, invented the modern concept of the analog synthesizer. Moog debuted the instrument at the 1964 Audio Engineering Society convention in New York. It was much smaller than other synthesizers, such as the RCA Synthesizer introduced a