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.
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