Matrosov, Ivan Konstantinovich

Born June 16 (28), 1886, in the village of Malye Soli, in present-day Nekrasov Raion, Yaroslavl Oblast; died Oct. 30, 1965, in Moscow. Soviet inventor, designer of several systems of automatic railroad brakes.

From 1904 to 1916, Matrosov was a mechanic and later a fireman and engineer. In 1923 he graduated from a railroad technicians’ school in Petrograd. From 1923 to 1928 he was a technician in the office of the Northwest Railroad. From 1928 he worked at the Moscow Brake Works.

In 1926, Matrosov proposed a new automatic brake system for freight trains. In 1931, after comparative tests, the Matrosov brake was accepted as a standard for freight trains on all railroads in the USSR. In 1935 he developed a brake for the trains of the Moscow subway and in 1945 a brake for passenger trains. He invented a number of assemblies for braking devices, such as a limit valve (1935), an automatic load-scheduling regulator for train braking (1944, together with E. V. Klykov), and an engineer’s brake valve. In 1950 he designed an electropneumatic brake for freight trains, and in 1959 he improved his own braking system.

Matrosov received the State Prize of the USSR in 1941 and was awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and medals.