Background
Sims was born on April 6, 1844, in New York City, the son of Capt. Lindsay D. and Catherine B. Sims.
Sims was born on April 6, 1844, in New York City, the son of Capt. Lindsay D. and Catherine B. Sims.
Sims was graduated from the Newark, New Jersey, high school in 1861; soon after this he enlisted in the 37th New Jersey Regiment and served in the Civil War, 1861-1865.
Sims invented various devices in electro-magnets. In 1872 he constructed a small electric motor for light work, with a battery of twenty half-gallon Bunsen cells, which would propel an open boat sixteen feet long, with six persons on board, at four miles an hour. He was the first to apply electricity for the propulsion of torpedoes. His "fish torpedo, " on which he secured patent No. 319, 633 in 1882, was a submarine boat with a cylindrical hull of copper, conical ends, and a screw propeller and rudder. Within it was a coil of cable two miles long, by means of which it was propelled, guided, and exploded, the power being electrically generated on shore or shipboard. Ten of these, purchased by the United States government in 1885, were experimented with for a number of years by army officers, and for a time were seriously considered for adoption as a principal means of coast defense. These torpedoes were twenty-eight feet long, twenty-one inches in diameter, and attained a speed of eleven miles an hour when tested by the government in 1885.
Subsequently Sims designed a boat with a speed of twenty-two miles an hour, capable of carrying a five hundred pound charge of dynamite. He also invented an apparatus for coiling ropes and for preventing ropes from kinking and twisting while they were being paid out, patent No. 374, 209, and the Sims-Dudley powder pneumatic gun, patent No. 619, 025, which was used by the Cuban insurgents and by the Rough Riders at the battle of Santiago. This was a very light field gun, intended to be drawn by one horse, or by three or four men, and consisted of two tubes, one of which carried the projectile and the other the powder charge of from six to eight ounces of powder. The projectile was a vaned cylinder with a Merriam fuze and a charge of explosive gelatin, pencil of gun cotton, and fulminate of mercury; when the projectile struck an object, a steel ball, acting as a hammer, was driven forward by the sudden retardation of the flight of the shell and struck one or more percussion caps, which ignited the charge.
Sims also invented a breech mechanism for cannon, patent No. 619, 026; the Sims-Merriam projectile, patent No. 667, 407; a wireless dirigible torpedo, of which he sold five to the Japanese government in 1907; a dynamite gun for use with dirigibles, and a dynamite gun for aeroplanes.
At the time of his death he was engaged in designing a dynamite cruiser to carry one hundred tons of high explosive, controlled by an operator on shipboard or on shore. He died in Newark, on January 7, 1918, where he had made his home for years.
President of the New York Ordnance Company
On June 11, 1867, Sims married Lida Leek of Newark, who died in 1888; on June 27, 1891, he married Mrs. Josephine Courter French of Newark.