Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea fired Simon Lake's childhood interest in underwater travel. He later worked in his father's foundry while studying the practical problems of building and operating submarines.

Lake submitted a design to the United States Navy in the early 1890s. His proposal included level submergence, a diver compartment, multiple propellers, a double hull, and wheels for traveling along the bottom. Although several board members reportedly favored the design, Lake had submitted plans rather than a funded construction bid.

He responded by building the small wooden Argonaut Jr prototype in 1894 and forming the Lake Submarine Company in 1895. By 1898, his larger Argonaut had completed a long open-water voyage along the eastern United States coast using a gasoline engine.

Doug's Argonaut Jr 2010 recreated the experimental spirit of Lake's wooden prototype with modern plywood, adhesives, controls, compressed air, and safety systems. It was built to learn by testing the ideas in the water, not as a certified deep-diving pressure hull.