Engineer and inventor, born in Pleasantville, New Jersey, USA. Interested in designing underwater vessels, he competed with John Holland's design in 1893, and launched his gasoline-engine-powered Argonaut, which became the first submarine to successfully operate in the open sea (1898). He established the Lake Torpedo Boat Co in Bridgeport, CT (1900), and the US government bought his submarine Seal in 1911. He also worked as a submarine consultant to the Russian, German, and British governments.
Simon Lake (September 4, 1866 - June 23, 1945) was an American mechanical engineer and naval architect who obtained over two hundred patents for advances in naval design and competed with John Holland to build the first submarines for the United States Navy. He built his first submarine, Argonaut, in 1894 in response to an 1893 request from the Navy for a submarine torpedo boat. Neither Argonaut nor Lake's following submarine, Protector, built in 1901, were accepted by the Navy. He sold Protector to Russia in 1904 and spent the next seven years in Europe designing submarines for the Austro-Hungarian Navy, the Kaiserliche Marine, and Imperial Russian Navy. When he returned to the United States in 1912, he founded the Lake Torpedo Boat Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which built 24 submarines for the U.S. Navy during and after World War I. Lake's first submarine for the U.S. Navy, USS G-1 (SS-19½), set a submergence record of 256 feet in November 1912. Following company closure, Lake continued designing maritime salvage systems, and advised the U.S. Navy on submarine technology and maritime salvage during World War II.
The US Navy built a class of vessels for use as submarine tenders named in his honor the Simon Lake class; Poluhowich: Argonaut The Submarine Legacy of Simon Lake, Texas A&M University Press, November 1999, ISBN 0-89096-894-2
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