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:''For the writer Simon Lake, see the pseudonym of Charles L. Grant.'' ''For the musician and animator Simon Lake, see Sim0n0id.'' Simon Lake (September 4, 1866 – June 23, 1945) was a Quaker American mechanical engineer and naval architect who obtained over two hundred patents for advances in naval design and competed with John Philip Holland to build the first submarines for the United States Navy. ==Biography== Born in Pleasantville, New Jersey on September 4, 1866.〔(Famous People in Atlantic County History ), Atlantic County, New Jersey. Accessed March 31, 2008.〕 Lake joined his father's foundry business after attending public schools in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Lake had a strong interest in undersea travel. He built his first submarine, ''Argonaut Junior'', in 1894 in response to an 1893 request from the US Navy for a submarine torpedo boat. In 1898 he followed up with the 36-foot ''Argonaut 1'', which he sailed from Norfolk, Virginia for a thousand miles to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, arriving in November, 1898. As a result of lessons learned on that journey, he rebuilt it into the 60-foot ''Argonaut 2''. Neither ''Argonaut'' nor Lake's following submarine, ''Protector'', built in 1901, were accepted by the Navy. ''Protector'' was the first submarine to have diving planes mounted forward of the conning tower and a flat keel. Four diving planes allowed ''Protector'' to maintain depth without changing ballast tank levels, and to dive level without a down-angle. Level diving was a feature of several subsequent Lake designs, notably the first three US G-class submarines. ''Protector'' also had a lock-out chamber for divers to leave the submarine. Lake, lacking Holland's financial backing, was unable to continue building submarines in the United States. He sold ''Protector'' to Imperial Russia in 1904 as the ''Osetr'' and spent the next seven years in Europe designing submarines for the Austro-Hungarian Navy, Germany's ''Kaiserliche Marine'', and the Imperial Russian Navy (''Osetr''- and ''Kaiman''-class submarines). He lived in Milford, Connecticut from 1907 until his death in 1945. In 1912, he founded the Lake Torpedo Boat Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which built 26 submarines for the United States Navy during and after World War I. Lake's first submarine for the U.S. Navy, , set a depth record of in November 1912. In 1922 the United States and other countries signed treaties limiting the size of their navies. This led to financial difficulties which forced the Lake Torpedo Boat Company to close in the mid-1920s. Following the company's closure, Lake continued designing maritime salvage systems including obtaining permission to partially salvage the Lusitania off the south Irish coast and then later a failed attempt to salvage gold from , a British frigate that sank in 1780 in New York's East River with his submarine, the ''Explorer''.〔("Midget Sub To Seek Riches On Sea Floor" ) ''Popular Science'', March 1933〕 Lake redesigned the former as the Arctic exploration submarine ''Nautilus'', used by Sir Hubert Wilkins in a 1931 expedition. He also advised the United States Navy on submarine technology and maritime salvage during World War II. He died on June 23, 1945. His granddaughter was the famous actress Ann Sothern. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Simon Lake」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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