LIEUTENANT General Mikhail T. Kalashnikov was born November 10, 1919, to a poor peasant family just after the October revolution.
His family was exiled to Siberia, where they lived a hard farming existence. Kalashnikov started inventing tools at an early age to make life easier for his family, including coming up with a special wooden mill to make flour.
At 19 he was drafted into the army to serve in the Second World War. He was attached to a tank division, where he kept inventing.
The AK47 came about when Kalashnikov was in hospital recovering from wounds and shellshock, pondering how unfair it was that Germans had automatic weapons, and his fellow Russians only single-shot rifles.
The first prototype was built in 1946. In 1949 the AK47 (Avtomat Kalashnikov model 1947) went into use. Since then 50 armies have used it and over 100 million have been produced around the world. All the weapons testing over the years has left Kalashnikov deaf.
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He spends his summer days at a country house on the bank of a crystalline lake, in the heart of the South Urals countryside.