W O Bentley
| W. O. Bentley MBE |
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16 September 1888 Hampstead, England |
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| Died | 13 August 1971 (aged 82) Woking, England |
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| Alma mater | King's College London | ||||||||||||||
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| Nationality | English | ||||||||||
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Walter Owen Bentley, MBE (16 September 1888 – 13 August 1971) was an English engineer who designed engines for cars and aircraft, raced cars and motorcycles, and founded Bentley Motors Limited in Cricklewood near London.
He was known as "W. O." without any need to add the word Bentley.
Bentley, born in Hampstead, London, was the youngest of his Adelaide-born parents’ nine children. His father was retired businessman Alfred Bentley, and mother was Emily, née Waterhouse. As the son of a prosperous family he was privately educated at Clifton College in Bristol from 1902 until 1905, when at the age of 16 he left to start work as an apprentice engineer with the Great Northern Railway at Doncaster in Yorkshire.
The premium five-year apprenticeship with Great Northern, which cost his father £75, taught W.O. to design complex railway machinery and also gave him practical experience in the technical procedures to cast, manufacture, and build it. He later recalled: "The sight of one of Patrick Stirling's eight-foot singles could move me profoundly." While with Great Northern, he came close to realizing his childhood ambition to drive one of their Atlantic express locomotives, when at the end of his apprenticeship he acquired footplate experience as a second fireman on main-line expresses. "My longest day,” he said, “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." He completed his apprenticeship in the summer of 1910 but decided that the railways did not offer him enough scope for a satisfying career.
In 1909 and 1910 Bentley raced Quadrant, Rex, and Indian motorcycles. He competed in two Isle of Man Tourist Trophy races, on a Rex in 1909 and as a member of Indian's factory team in 1910. He did not finish in either event; in 1910, his Indian’s rear tyre burst on the second lap
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