Zalmon G. Simmons

Beginning at the age of 21, Simmons worked as a general store clerk for pioneer Seth Doan for $200 (equivalent to $6,146 in 2019) per year. Due to Mr. Doan's ill health, Simmons ran the store after six months employment. He bought the store after working there 16[3] or 18 months.[1] He ran the store successfully for 12 years, until he sought other interests.[3]

Simmons acquired half interest in the Wisconsin State Telegraph Company in 1856,[3] became a director, and in December 1858 became its secretary and treasurer. In 1864, he was made president. The company became the North-West Telegraphy company when it merged with the Minnesota State Telegraph Company in 1865. Simmons was elected president of the new company.[4] He remained president until 1881, when the company leased its lines to the Western Union Telegraph Company.[3] At the time that Simmons invested in the company, it was almost worthless and had service only between Milwaukee and Madison. Simmons extended service into remote areas, with lines established through nearly impenetrable swamps and forests.[3]

Simmons was on the board of directors of the Western Union Telegraph Company.[4] Simmons designed a wooden telegraph insulator and on April 16, 1871, purchased a cheesebox factory that became the Simmons Manufacturing Company to manufacture the insulators.[1]

One of his general store customers paid for merchandise with a patent for a woven wire bedspring. At that time, mattresses were made of cotton or horsehair. Simmons took the ideas from the patent and found a way to make the cost of manufacturing affordable.[1] In 1870, Simmons founded what would become the Simmons Bedding Company,[7] but the market had not yet developed for spring beds. Instead, Simmons manufactured brass beds that were sold domestically and internationally.[1] The Northwestern Wire Mattress Company was incorporated in 1884 and in 1889 the name was changed to Simmons Manufacturing Company.[1] In 1925, Simmons produced the Beautyrest mattress, for which the company is best known. It was sold at three to four times the cost of wire mattresses at the time for $39.50 (equivalent to $576 in 2019) and four years later had sold more than $9 million (equivalent to $134,005,814 in 2019) of the mattresses. The company introduced the pull-out bed, Hide-a-Bed, in 1940.[1] By 1941, the company made springs, mattresses, steel beds and furniture and employed about 2,500 men.[7] During World War II, it produced 2,700 different products needed to support the war effort.[1]

Simmons surveyed the Englemann Canyon for telegraph lines to Pikes Peak in Colorado.[8] He was instrumental in stringing telegraph lines alongside railroads and had earlier purchased a fifty percent interest in a telegraph company. After a miserable two-day trip to the top of the mountain on a mule, he thought that there should be a more comfortable and "civilized" way to make the trip. He got the idea of a train from the owner of a hotel where he was staying. Simmons then financed the building of the Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway in 1889. The railway itself was built by Italian laborers and was operational by 1891.[9][10] It can still be ridden to the top.[11]