Simon Ingersoll (March 3, 1818 – July 24, 1894) was an American inventor who created the

steam-powered A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be tr ...

percussion rock drill, which replaced the hand drill and was a major advancement in the

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

and

construction Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form Physical object, objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Pr ...

industries. The drill vastly increased efficiency. However, despite lower labor costs, there was no recorded upturn in unemployment. Instead, workers were assigned to more meaningful tasks. Ingersoll was born in Stanwich,

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

. He was a farmer, and in his spare time an inventor. Based on his percussion drill, in 1871 he founded the Ingersoll Rock Drill Company, a predecessor of today's

Ingersoll Rand Ingersoll Rand is an American multinational company that provides flow creation and industrial products. The company was formed in February 2020 through the spinoff of the industrial segment of Ingersoll-Randplc (now known as Trane Technologies) ...

. Simon Ingersoll later sold his patents and died destitute in 1894.

References

External links

Bio at National Inventors Hall of Fame
1818 births 1894 deaths 19th-century American inventors Ingersoll Rand people 19th-century American businesspeople {{US-business-bio-1810s-stub