The Stylophone, dear Beanster, was the crappiest attempt at producing an 'instrument for the masses'.

If you've never seen one, be thankful!

Basically, it was a small battery powered electronic 'organ' with markings to represent piano keys. Attached by a flimsy piece of wire was a pen-thingy, which played a note when brought in contact with one of the 'keys'.

It had a sort of primitive 'vibrato' effect, and sounded like a fart in a drainpipe.

There were two models, one of which played in the treble register, the other played an octave below - the horrifying idea was that more than one of these dreadful things could be played simultaneously as some sort of hideous orchestra...

Rolf Harris was picked to market the thing, and it was moderately successful.

To pick it out on 'Space Oddity' - the 'glissando' at the start of the instrumental break is achieved by sliding the 'pen' along all the keys from left to right. Once you've established what the thing sounds like, you can hear it right at the very beginning, and pick it out all through if you're really that sad!

Maybe there's a website dedicated to the infernal things somewhere, but I'd rather not look!

To quote 'Itchy-coo Park' - It's all too beautiful...

Another bit of trivia/bragging - I recently acquired a Selmer Clavioline... It's the instrument made particularly famous by recording engineer Joe Meel in the '60's - it was the solo instrument on 'Telstar' by the Tornadoes, and also on 'Runaway' by Del Shannon, to name but a few.

Anyway, I'm in the middle of restoring it - some of the switches are broken, and the contacts were filthy. Good old valve (tube?) technology...