Gordon Bailey Ingram (December 30, 1924 – November 4, 2004) was an American inventor and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

. Along with

Mitchell WerBell III Mitchell Livingston WerBell III (March 18, 1918 – December 17, 1983) was an OSS operative, mercenary, paramilitary trainer, firearms engineer, and arms dealer. Early life and OSS service WerBell was born in Philadelphia, the son of a Czarist c ...

, he founded

Military Armament Corporation Military Armament Corporation is a defunct American manufacturer of small arms, co-founded by Gordon Ingram, an engineer and gun designer, and Mitchell WerBell, owner of SIONICS, which manufactured gun sound suppressors. It is known for manufac ...

. Ingram was the creator of the

MAC-10 The Military Armament Corporation Model 10, officially abbreviated as "M10" or "M-10", and more commonly known as the MAC-10, is a compact, blowback operated machine pistol/submachine gun that was developed by Gordon B. Ingram in 1964. It is ...

and

MAC-11 The MAC-11 (''Military Armament Corporation'' Model 11) is a machine pistol developed by American firearm designer Gordon Ingram at the Military Armament Corporation (MAC) during the 1970s in Powder Springs, Georgia, United States. The weapon is a ...

machine pistol A machine pistol is an autoloading pistol capable of fully automatic fire. The term can also be used to describe a stockless handgun-style submachine gun. The term is a calque of ''Maschinenpistole'', the German word for submachine guns. Ma ...

s, and is widely credited with repopularizing the submachine gun.

Biography

Gordon B. Ingram was born in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

, California. His first foray into the weapons design world was during his years of service in the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

. He designed the Ingram Model 6 in 1949 and later went on to design and manufacture the

and

. Ingram's role in the creation of the MAC-10 earned him the moniker “father of the machine pistol”. His design accomplishments spanned over forty years and left behind several notable designs. His Ranchero and Durango series of rifles incorporated the concept of multiple-use weapons that all use not only the same pistol-caliber rounds but the associated magazines as well. Flickr - ~Steve Z~ - Cobray M11

Ingram was also known for his associations with some of the US defense sector's most prominent figures, such as

, who designed the suppressor for the MAC-10.

References

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Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ingram, Gordon 1924 births 2004 deaths Firearm designers Weapon design Weapon designers 20th-century American inventors United States Army personnel of World War II