I don’t consider him such. A brilliant man no doubt but he mainly worked to streamline manufacturing methods via the lost wax casting process. He brought out some great products at the right time but I don’t see any truly new and innovative designs that he was responsible for creating from scratch like Browning.
We have both to thank for their contributions no doubt but I don’t consider them equals.
^^^^^This^^^^^^^^^^ I don't think Ruger ever came up with any new, ground-breaking designs. The closest he came, probably, was with his original product, the Ruger Standard Pistol. It was somewhat different than anything (that I'm aware of) that was available at the time and designed to be cheap to manufacture. Everything else was just a new take on an old design that could be produced more affordably. More a Henry Ford than a John Browning.
When the industry was moving largely toward the California school of firearms design (think Weatherby and beyond) he brought it back down to earth with the classically designed 77. He brought us a latter-day falling block in the No.1 . Probably Ruger was responsible for a resurgence in interest in single-action revolvers as well, not to mention resurrecting a lot of classic calibers. Without Ruger we might not have modern versions of the .22 Hornet, .220 Swift, .257 Roberts, .250-300, 7X57 and others. The other gun companies (which is to say Winchester and Remington) wouldn't have gone anywhere near that stuff if he hadn't shown that it was viable. They were way too busy trying to outdo each other with more "latest and greatest" than the other guy. It might be interesting to see what the current US gun market might look like without Ruger's influence.
