Simon Lake

Simon Lake (1866 to 1945) was an American mechanical engineer and naval architect, raised as a Quaker, who obtained more than two hundred patents over his career for advances in naval and submarine design. He is remembered in transport history chiefly for his rivalry with John Philip Holland to build the first submarines adopted by the United States Navy, a competition in which Lake pursued a design philosophy emphasizing level, controlled underwater travel and features such as wheels for moving along the seabed and a diver's airlock compartment, in contrast to Holland's more torpedo shaped, dive oriented approach. Although Holland's design won the Navy's initial contracts, Lake's companies produced numerous submarines used commercially and by other navies, and several of his engineering innovations, including diving compartments and improved ballast systems, were later adopted industry wide. His decades of patented work place him among the small group of engineers who established the basic vocabulary of modern submarine design in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.