John Richard Morgan was born at Barry on the 13th July 1904, and received his initial education at Barry Boys’ County School. In 1920 he began an indentured apprenticeship with the Barry Graving Dock and Engineering Co Ltd, and in 1923 was awarded a Glamorgan County Scholarship to the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire where he read for an Honours Degree in Mechanical Engineering under Professor A. J. Sutton Pippard. He was permitted by his firm to attend the University from September 1923 provided he spent all the vacation time at the works, so that he can justly claim to have been an even earlier example of a “sandwich student” than a previous recent President.