Topic: Walter Bentley

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.