When U.S. spacecraft talk to mission control, the device that powers the signal is similar to one first presented to the world by a Victorian Welshman.

William Grove called it the “gas voltaic battery”. Now known to science as the fuel cell, it’s widely seen as the mobile power source of the future.

Born in Swansea, Grove was educated privately before going up to Brasenose College, Oxford. For many years Professor of Physics at the London Institution, he produced a battery that was used to power many of the early American telegraph stations.

He also enjoyed a lucrative sideline as a lawyer, acting in high profile patent and criminal cases, and served for a while as a judge in the Court of Common Pleas.

Grove built and demonstrated the first basic fuel cell in 1839 and described it in a letter to a scientific journal. But lacking obvious commercial applications, it lay dormant for well over a century. Now amid heightened concern over global warming and the pernicious effects of engine emissions, fuel cells may yet change the world.

Fuel cells produce electricity by combining hydrogen with oxygen. It’s clean and simple technology as used by NASA to power onboard systems on its Apollo and Shuttle programmes.

Instead of harmful gases, fuel cells merely produce water - usually in the form of steam. For that reason they’ve been used in a new generation of ‘hydrogen powered’ cars. While these exotic vehicles are still highly expensive to produce, the race is very much on to come up with a practical and affordable alternative car of the future.

In 2003 the U.S. Government authorised $1.2 billion dollars of research funding with energy Secretary Spencer Abraham predicting that the first models would be on sale by 2020.

If he’s right, then hydrogen tanks will start replacing petrol pumps and global oil consumption will be drastically reduced. If only William Grove could be around to see it.