Early Life and Influences
Vickers was always interested in machinery and mechanics and was a self-taught master machinist. He served in World War I in France with the US Army Signal Corps, where he learned about the first generations of electronics and radio. Returning to southern California after the war, he founded Vickers Manufacturing Co., later to be called Vickers Inc.
Initially his company was principally engaged in general mechanical and machining work. The famous author and sportsman Zane Grey once came to his shop to have a large salt water fishing reel repaired. Grey decided that the young Harry Vickers was a man with a future, and offered to arrange for him to be tutored in calculus and other engineering disciplines at night by professors from the University of Southern California.
Read more about this topic: Harry Franklin Vickers
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or influences:
“Well, it’s early yet!”
—Robert Pirosh, U.S. screenwriter, George Seaton, George Oppenheimer, and Sam Wood. Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx)
“Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man’s life if he has the weight and cares about the words.”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)
“Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened.”
—Gerald W. Johnson (1890–1980)