Axel Welin (1862-1951), was a Swedish inventor and industrialist.
Ernst Axel Martin Welin studied at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm from 1879 to 1884. Between 1886 and 1888, Welin worked as a weapons designer for Thorsten Nordenfelt in London. In 1889 he started his own engineering firm, the Welin Davit & Engineering Company Ltd. He soon designed the famed Welin Breech.
However, his main interest was davits. He invented a new and improved davit for lowering boats on board ship, a quadrant davit for double-banked boats which simply became known as the Welin davit. The RMS Titanic was equipped with Welin davits,[1] and after the disaster the demand for his product skyrocketed. He was awarded the John Scott Medal of The Franklin Institute in 1911. He retired a wealthy man in 1932 and returned to Sweden.
The Welin Davit Company continues today as Welin Lambie, based at Brierley Hill in the West Midlands, UK.