British automotive engineers

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 44. Chapters: Henry Royce, W. O. Bentley, Edward Turner, Frederick W. Lanchester, Harry Ricardo, Frank George Woollard, Frederick Richard Simms, George Lanchester, Nicholas Straussler, Harry Ferguson, George Eyston, J. G. Parry-Thomas, Harry John Lawson, Tom Barrett, Louis Zborowski, Sir John Carden, 6th Baronet, Doug Hele, George Brough, Owen Wyn Owen, Les Harris, Brian Jones, Bert Hopwood, John Wyer, Francis Rodwell Banks, Harry Webster, Dougal Marchant, George Johnston, Walter Hassan, Cameron Earl, Laurence Pomeroy, Leo Villa, Henry Spurrier, William Heynes, Diarmuid Downs, Bertram Hopkinson, Harry Mundy, Henry Pelham Lee, David Napier, Andy Brown, Paul Morgan, James Sidney Drewry, Hugo Spowers, Mike Costin, Frank Costin, Sidney Horstmann, Dorothée Pullinger, William Daniels. Excerpt: Walter Owen Bentley, MBE (16 September 1888 - 13 August 1971) engineer; designer of aero engines, designer and racer of motor cars, founder of Bentley Motors Limited in Cricklewood near London. He was known as "W.O." without any need to add the word Bentley. W O Bentley was born in Hampstead, London the youngest of nine children of retired businessman Alfred Bentley and Emily née Waterhouse. He was educated at Clifton College, a Public School in Clifton, Bristol, England from 1902 until 1905 which he left at the age of 16 to start work as an apprentice railway engineer with the Great Northern Railway at Doncaster in Yorkshire. "The sight of one of Patrick Stirling's eight-foot singles could move me profoundly." At Doncaster he learnt, hands-on, each technical procedure; how to cast make and build complex machinery as well as design it. G N R Atlantic express locomotive No. 251This premium apprenticeship cost his father £75 for a five year term but with Great Northern he came close to his childhood ambition of driving a Great Northern Atlantic express locomotive. At the end of his apprenticeship he was made-for footplate experience-a second fireman on main-line expresses. "My longest day was London to Leeds and back, on the return journey doing Wakefield to King's Cross non-stop for 175 miles. This was a total day's run of 400 miles, entailing a consumption of about seven tons of coal, every pound of it to be shovelled. Not a bad day's exercise." During this time he also experimented with motorcycles, riding and racing Quadrant, Rex, and Indian models. He completed his apprenticeship in the summer of 1910 and decided that for him the railways did not hold enough scope for a satisfying career. He spent a brief period studying theoretical engineering at King's College London, and a period with the National Motor Cab Company then running a fleet of 250 Unics where he was, amongst other things, in charge of cab maintenance and fascinated by the cabbies' ingenuity at fidd