Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov

Who was Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov?

Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov was a Russian weapons designer; he is one of the fathers of the modern assault rifle.

Mostly known for the Samozaryadnyi karabin sistemi Simonova, 1945, or SKS carbine, he also pioneered the assault and semi-automatic rifle field in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly under the supervision of both Vladimir Fyodorov and Fedor Tokarev. His early work preceded both the M1 Garand, and the later M1 Carbine, AK-47, and M16 series.

Born in 1894 in Fedotov, Simonov began work in a foundry immediately after completing his elementary school studies. By the end of World War I, after completing a basic technician's course of instruction, he began working on a pioneering automatic rifle designed by Vladimir Grigoryevich Fyodorov, the Federov Avtomat. After the Russian Revolution, Simonov continued further at the Moscow Polytechnic Institute, graduating in 1924 to work at Russia's giant Tula Arsenal. By 1926 he had become a quality-control inspector at Tula, and by 1927, had been promoted into the Soviet Design and Development Department where he worked directly under Fyodorov.