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The
Professor, aged 9
Childerhode
Nauticold'n
trainit
Bebeseekers
Actyup
in spotlighty
Starrystage'n
screel
Sitting
cumftibold
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Stanley
Unwin was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on 7 June 1911.
His
mother and father had emigrated from the UK in the early part of
the century but it was to be a stay cut short by the death of
Stanley's father, Ivan, in 1914. A year later his
mother decided to bring
the family - his older brother Oswald (who died after a bout of
appendicitis at the tender age of 8½) and his two sisters,
Gladys and Eveline - over to
England, travelling steerage on a commandeered German ship.
Back
in dear old Blighty, one
of Stanley's earliest and fondest memories was of his Uncle Jack who by all accounts was a bit of a mechanical wizard and a
dab hand at mending clocks and watches. Looking at Stanley's
later life, Jack may well have been a bit of
an early influence on the young lad, fuelling a lifelong fascination with all things
electrical.
When
the First World War broke out Stanley was evacuated out to a number
of 'billets', mainly across the Essex area. During this time he
had little contact with either his sisters or his mother, apart from the
very occasional summer holiday.
Just
after the war in 1919, he was sent to the National Children's
Home in Congleton in Cheshire. Here, he seemed to get up to what
most kids get up to but he did flex his tonsils in a local choir
which toured around the county.
One of these
musical outings took him to
Belle Vue in Manchester, a visit which proved to be a bit of a
turning point for our Stan:
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Although
it was memorable as a great fairground, there
was another attraction which was to influence my
life to a considerable degree. A large trolley,
rather like those perambulated round a hotel
dining room laden with trifles and other
delicacies, but even larger, was being pushed
along by two men. The strange looking objects
upon it drew me like a magnet. There was an
array of coiled wires, little blocks with
terminals thereon and wires leading up to other
wires strung across two poles supported at each
end of the trolley. Later I learnt that they
were valves and in fact the whole set-up was a
transmitter. |
This
run-in with what turned out to be a BBC Outside Broadcast Unit
certainly fired
his imagination. He immediately set about scraping the money
together to buy an early Hertzite crystal wireless set,
which signalled the start of a hobby
that was to later turn into a very successful career.
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