Nikita Demidov

[1] Peter I of Russia charged the enterprising blacksmith Nikita with casting cannon for his many military expeditions and he was ennobled with name Demidov for having strongly supported the tsar's activities.

The founder of the Demidov family, he was the eldest son of Demid Grigorevich Antufiev (1624–1664), a free blacksmith from Tula.

Nikita began as a blacksmith himself and was put in charge of producing muskets and halberds (of which he was the main supplier) for the Russian Army by Tsar Peter the Great.

In 1702 the Tsar granted him permission to change his name to Demidov and put a new foundry in the Urals under his command - it became Russia's first true armaments factory.

During Russia's Great Northern War against Sweden (1700–1721), the Demidov factories became the main supplier to the Russian army, supplying cannons, pistols, swords and other munitions, producing them twice as fast and twice as cheaply as the competition and thus making a decisive contribution to the Russian victory.