John Moses Browning
And just almost exactly "in the middle" of this century, on January 23, 1855, in the small town of Ogden, in the state of Utah, in the United States, a boy was born, who was named John Moses, and his father was Jonathan Browning - one of the first Mormon settlers in this state. A devout Mormon, he had three wives and 22 children. His business was profitable - the manufacture of muzzle-loading rifles. It went well with him, so in 1852 he opened his own arms shop. So it is not surprising that from early childhood, little John was surrounded by all sorts of "iron", watched his father's work, helped him in some way, and then completely followed in his footsteps and at the age of 13 he assembled his first gun from the parts he had at hand, and some he did himself.
John Moses Browning with his Auto 5 self-loading 5-round smoothbore shotgun.
How long he studied and where - such information is not found on the Internet. Probably, there are books in which his biography is considered in more detail, but … you never know where that is. However, something else is important for us, namely that already at the age of 23, John Moses Browning received his first patent for the single-shot rifle J. M. Browning Single Shot Rifle ", later named" Winchester Model 1879 ". His father's business, that is, a forge and an arms shop, John and his brothers received after the death of their father. They opened a small arms factory, J. M. Browning & Bros. " and with her shop and engaged in the repair and alteration of weapons of large companies, and also began to develop their own weapons under their own trademark.
However, they faced a problem common to all small businesses using old equipment. They got all the machines from their father, so it was very difficult to make something high-quality on them. The price of the brothers' products could not be high, no matter what quality weapons they produced, because immediately at the service of buyers were slightly inferior samples of such firms as Remington, Savage, Winchester. It is clear that it was very difficult for small manufacturers to compete with such giants of the arms industry. Nevertheless, from 1879 to 1883, John Browning, who was in charge of the company, received patents for a bolt-action rifle with a tubular magazine, a trigger rifle with a tubular magazine and a lever reloading, and a number of other samples. And then it happened that in 1883, one of the sales agents of the Oliver Winchester company by the name of Andrew McAuslander fell into the hands of a single-shot gun from the Browning brothers. He understood the weapon, was able to appreciate it, after which he bought it and sent it to the management of his company. There, Oliver Winchester himself became interested in the Browning rifle. And when he got interested, he sent his vice-president of the company, T. Bennett, to Ogden to buy out a patent for its production from them.
Romanian infantrymen with Colt Browning machine guns 1895
By that time, John Browning also realized that although his products were in demand, he would not be able to implement all his new ideas, since the routine work for a piece of bread takes too much of his time. Therefore, he happily agreed to Winchester's offer and sold him the right to manufacture this rifle for $ 8,000. At that time, it was a large sum. But even more important was another offer - to work for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Finding himself in such a large and mechanized enterprise, John Browning was able to immediately patent several of his new developments, for example, a semi-automatic rifle with a magazine under the barrel "Auto 5".
The USS Algonquin ship with a Colt Browning machine gun.
At the same time, Browning worked on manual reloading magazine rifles (models 1886, 1892, 1894, 1897) and pistols with automatic reloading. Already in 1890, the Colt company began producing the first automatic pistols in the United States, and this model was also designed by Browning. In 1886, he applied for three basic patents for self-loading pistols, which used recoil energy and locked the bolt by means of a swinging cylinder. At one time he was fascinated by the idea of using powder gases discharged from the bore for recharging. He received a number of patents for the design of such a pistol, but the management of the Winchester company decided not to start issuing them. The designer did not like this, and in 1902 Browning left the United States for Belgium, where he began to work for the Fabrik Nacional firm in Liege. It was here that his famous pistols appeared, which made the name "Browning" a household name.
A very interesting patent for a pistol with upward discharge of gases from the barrel. As can be seen in the diagram, the gas outlet was covered by a lever, which was thrown upward by the pressure of the gases. At the same time, he pulled back the bolt and the hammer was cocked. The barrel is located very low, which, in theory, improves accuracy. On the other hand, the lever swinging in front of the shooter's eyes is clearly not a very "pleasant" design detail.
In 1903, his famous automatic pistol was born - "Browning's 9mm pistol, model 1903". Its best advertisement will be, perhaps, the fact that it was then produced for 37 years, and in total about ten million of such pistols were produced. Seeing that there was a great demand for such a weapon, Browning three years later launched the "7, 65-mm Browning pistol, model 1906" - structurally similar to its predecessor, but with a drummer and distinguished by its small size. Four million pistols of this type is also quite a good market figure! In 1910, one of the most perfect civilian self-defense pistols at that time appeared - the FN Browning M1910. At first, it was produced for cartridges of 7, 65 mm caliber, but in 1912 a new sample of it appeared chambered for the 9 mm Browning cartridge, without a rim and with an emphasis directly in the muzzle. Finally, on February 17, 1910, a patent was obtained for his self-loading pistol chambered for.45 ACP, which became known throughout the world as the Colt M1911 "Govermentl". For a full 75 years, it was in service with the American army and is still sold in American gun stores. John Browning also developed some very successful automatic weapons. In particular, this is his famous machine gun - "potato digger" Colt М1895 / 1914. In 1917, he completed work on a heavy machine gun, which was also bought by the Colt company. In 1921, he also designed the Browning M2 heavy machine gun, which turned out to be so successful that it is still in service with the American army and the armies of 50 countries of the world, and, moreover, it is still being produced. That is, this machine gun is 97 years old today!
The scheme of the device of the Colt-Browning machine gun in 1895
John Moses Browning lived for 71 years, that is, at that time it was long enough and during this time he designed 37 models of rifled and 18 models of smooth-bore weapons, and also received 128 patents for his developments, although they were not always named after him. But John Browning was not only developing weapons. He also created a large number of various cartridges for him (mostly pistol), and now they continue to be in mass production even today. Among them are 6, 35 mm Browning; 7, 65mm Browning; 9mm Browning short; 9mm Browning long;.38 ACP. That is, even if he had not created anything else, his name would have remained in the history of arms business, as the creator of the popular cartridges for short-barreled weapons!
The rebellious Czechoslovak corps in Russia was also armed with Colt Browning machine guns in 1895.
John Moses Browning died on November 26, 1926 in Belgium from a heart attack. However, he was still buried in the United States, and with military honors. But the most significant event in perpetuating his memory, perhaps, was the launch in serial production in 1935 by the Fabrik National company of his Browning High Power pistol, which he did not manage to finish during his lifetime.
Diagram of the device of the Winchester M1897, designed by John Browning.
