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

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

. Along with Mitchell WerBell III, he founded

Military Armament Corporation Military Armament Corporation (MAC) was an 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 and MAC-11

machine pistol A machine pistol is a handgun that is capable of automatic firearm, fully automatic fire, including shoulder stock, stockless handgun-style submachine guns. The Austrians introduced the world's first machine pistol, the Steyr M1912 pistol#Masch ...

s, and is widely credited with repopularizing the

submachine gun A submachine gun (SMG) is a magazine (firearms), magazine-fed automatic firearm, automatic carbine designed to fire handgun cartridges. The term "submachine gun" was coined by John T. Thompson, the inventor of the Thompson submachine gun, to descri ...

Biography

Gordon B. Ingram was born in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, 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 primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

. He designed the Ingram Model 6 in 1949 and later went on to design and manufacture the MAC-10 and MAC-11. 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 Mitchell WerBell III, 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