Early Life
Oswald Stevens Nock was the first son of Samuel James Nock and his wife Rose Amy (née Stevens). Born in Sutton Coldfield, his father became manager of a bank in Reading soon after Oswald's birth, and as a young child he was regularly taken in his pushchair to both the GWR and SECR lines that served Reading.
From 1913, young Oswald attended Marlborough House and then Reading School, before becoming a boarder at Giggleswick School in 1916 when the family moved to Barrow-in-Furness. Despite moderate performances in maths and science, Nock passed his school certificate and London matriculation examinations in 1920, and entered the City & Guilds Engineering College in London the following year. In 1924 he was awarded a BSc and having made unsuccessful applications to the GWR, Vickers at Barrow, and Armstrong Whitworth he became a graduate trainee at the Westinghouse, Brake, and Saxby Signal Co. Ltd the following year.
Read more about this topic: O. S. Nock
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“It was common practice for me to take my children with me whenever I went shopping, out for a walk in a white neighborhood, or just felt like going about in a white world. The reason was simple enough: if a black man is alone or with other black men, he is a threat to whites. But if he is with children, then he is harmless, adorable.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)