Troubled by asthma during his formative years, Sir Malcom Stokes-Station nonetheless showed early signs of the ingenuity that would later bring him fame, rigging up an early communication exchange to connect his bedroom to those of his friends across the street using a length of string and two tin cans. His studies at the Mrs Beaton University of Cakes and Jam were interrupted in their final year by the outbreak of war in 1939. Rejected as unfit for the armed forces, Sir Malcom served as Foreman of the Tunstall Magnetic Power Company, although when the war ended he set himself up in business, with decidedly mixed results. He enjoyed some success selling medicated socks, but his jam factory and soap projects in Burslem made little headway.

Pictured above: Sir Malcom with his father outside the Tunstall Magnetic Power Company.

Moving back to Montgomeryshire in 1946, he applied himself to creating "spacevision", a dream of many scientists for decades. His first crude apparatus sat on a tea chest. The base of his motor was a wash stand, a biscuit tin housed the valve technology, "scratting discs" were cut from cardboard, and he also utilised four NHS prescription spectacles as lenses. Scrap-wood, pipe cleaners, string, and earwax held the apparatus together.

By 1947, Sir Malcom had managed to transmit "space programmes" across a few feet, the first of which featured a flickering image of a monkey with finger-cymbals.

On 27th January 1948 he gave the world's first demonstration of true stereoscopic "spacevision" in his bedroom workshop before some fifty scientists and a cat. Sir Malcom fathered twins, George and Rupprecht, who have carried on their father's work at Spacephone.co.uk. To this day the boys remain with their mother Queenie in the family home.

Below, is vintage archive footage from the period and one of the earliest examples of "spacevision".

Early advertisement for Spacephone.co.uk