Early Life
Anthony (Tony) Fokker was born in Blitar (then Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia), to Herman Fokker, a Dutch coffee plantation owner. Some sources say that he was born in Kediri. At that time, Blitar was a part of the 'Kediri Residency', a colonial administrative division the capital of which was in Kediri. When Fokker was four the family returned to the Netherlands and settled in Haarlem in order to provide Fokker and his older sister, Toos, with a Dutch upbringing.
Fokker was not a studious boy and did not complete his high school education but he showed an early interest in mechanics, and preferred making things, playing with model trains and steam engines.and experimenting with model aeroplane designs. He devoted considerable effort to the development of a wheel that would not suffer from punctures, basically a wheel with a perimeter formed by a series of metal plates. This idea had been experimented with elsewhere and was already patented.
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
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