Origin of Nickname
The character is first seen in "The Sad Story of Henry" in the first book in the Railway Series, The Three Railway Engines. When Henry refused to leave a tunnel, the story says "a Fat Director who was on the train told the guard to get a rope". The character is referred to as the Fat Director/Controller for the remainder of the Railway Series, both in the narrative and by the other characters. The name Sir Topham Hatt is first mentioned in the Foreword to Henry the Green Engine and also appears on his luggage trunk in the same book in the story "Percy and the Trousers". The first use of the name Sir Topham Hatt in the narrative comes in Duck and the Diesel Engine when Diesel refers to the character as "Your worthy Fat..." but is interrupted and firmly corrected by Duck who says "'Sir Topham Hatt' to you".
Read more about this topic: The Fat Controller
Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin and/or nickname:
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)