He was born in the then Villa de Eten in 1838, his parents were the Spanish colonel Pedro Manuel Ruiz and Juliana Gallo,[4] when he was still a very young boy he lost his father and shortly after when he was just 11 years old his mother, this situation forced him to leave his small hometown to go to the city of Chiclayo where he began working as a watchmaker's assistant, a hobby that would interest him for the rest of his life.

After the war ended with the withdrawal of the Spanish squadron from South American waters, Ruiz was able to dedicate himself entirely to his engineering projects,[4] including his ambitious project of building a great clock for the Peruvian capital, which he achieved under the patronage of then-President José Balta who appointed him attached to the General Staff and financed his work, despite the opposition and criticism that his work received, the inventor continued serene and persevering, being that on December 6, 1870, a few days before celebrating a new anniversary of the Battle of Ayacucho and before the admiration in general, its monumental clock was inaugurated in the gardens of the Exhibition in front of the Palace of the same name.

In 1879, Pedro Ruiz Gallo returned to the arms race and after the loss of the Huáscar monitor in the naval combat of Angamos and obtained control of the sea by the Chilean squadron, he directed his efforts to the manufacture of torpedoes to be used against the blocking squad that had already appeared in front of Callao.

Thus, he died on April 24, 1880, when an explosion ended his life, caused due to an accident while working on an experimental torpedo in a workshop in the Ancón balneario, north of Callao.

[4] His body was buried in the Baquíjano del Callao Cemetery, where it remained until April 24, 1940, when, during the government of Manuel Prado Ugarteche, it was ordered that it be transferred to the Crypt of the Heroes of the War of the Pacific, where it currently rests.