Anybody who has been around me for any length of time has heard that phrase. And heard it a lot, too, because it is about as near as you can get to a 100% certainty that within your line of sight at any gun store or gun show there will be at least one firearm designed by John Moses Browning, still in production and selling well a hundred or more years after it was first designed. A list of just his commercial successes is illuminating:
Single Shot Rifles:
Winchester 1885
Bolt-action Rifles:
Winchester 1900
Lever-action Rifles:
Winchester 1886
Winchester 1892
Winchester 1894
Winchester 1895
Slide-action Rifles:
Winchester 1890
Recoil-operated Semi-automatic Rifles:
Remington Model 8
Blowback-operated Semi-automatic Rifles:
Browning .22 Semiauto
Double-barrel Shotguns:
Browning Superposed
Lever-action Shotguns:
Winchester 1887
Slide-action Shotguns:
Winchester 1897
Remington Model 17 (later the Ithaca 37)
Stevens 520
Recoil-operated Semi-automatic Shotguns:
Browning Auto 5 / Remington Model 11
Blowback-operated Semi-automatic Pistols:
FN M1900
Colt 1903/1908 Pocket Hammerless
FN 1906 Vest Pocket/Colt 1908 Vest Pocket
FN 1910
Colt Woodsman
Recoil-operated Semi-automatic Pistols:
Colt 1902
Colt 1903 Pocket Hammer
U.S. M1911
FN G.P. 35
Gas-operated Machine Guns:
Colt M1895
U.S. M1918 BAR
Recoil-Operated Machine Guns:
U.S. M1917/M1919
U.S. M2 Heavy Machine Gun
Automatic Machine Cannon:
Colt-Browning 37mm
About the only type of gun design he never really turned his hand to was revolvers and after all, why reinvent the wheel? Along the way, he pretty much invented gas operation, stack-barrel shotguns, autoloading shotguns, the tilting-barrel short recoil system used on almost all major-caliber semiauto pistols today, and a handful of the most familiar cartridges in use, from .25ACP to .50BMG.
Happy Birthday, JMB!
Sad thing is, I didn't need to read past the title to know it's be about JMB (PBUH)
ReplyDeletea few of his designs were improved eventually. Some, like the Auto 22, are still the pinnacle of the art.
ReplyDeleteNot too many problems you can't fix with either gun tape, lockwire, or an M2HB.
ReplyDeleteJim
Praise be his name. Did you ever see one of his dad's harmonica guns?
ReplyDeleteNever in real life. :(
ReplyDeleteHey Tam, since we're on the subject, I've been trying to find this out.
ReplyDeleteDid JMB invent the Mag disconnect? Seems that most of the eirliest examples of mag disconnects are on his guns, and he certainly favored them in designs (I'm damn curious why...)
So was that him, or did somebody else come up with that rotten idea?
yes, i know you're a traditionalist, and this is jmb's actual birthday...but if we're gonna have a january monday holiday, could there really be a candidate for celebration that had more to do with making our past and present survivable...and fun?
ReplyDeletejmb day...i like the sound of that. and we could have lots of roads named after him in the bitter clingy parts of town...jmb blvds., aves. and lanes all over the place. :o)
jtc
"About the only type of gun design he never really turned his hand to was revolvers and after all, why reinvent the wheel?"
ReplyDeleteHeh.
Weer'd Beard,
ReplyDelete"Did JMB invent the Mag disconnect?"
I think that was added to his guns later; I know the Vest Pocket and Pocket Hammerless didn't acquire theirs until they'd been in production quite a while.
I still hunt with the Remington Model 11 that my grandfather passed down to me. I hope to someday pass it on to one of my sons or grandsons as well. Built in the early 1920's and is still a better piece than what is out there today.
ReplyDeleteOr daughter, sorry Tam...
ReplyDeleteNathan,
ReplyDeleteSee what I did there?
I am always curious to ponder what JMB would be doing today if he were still alive. The advent of polymer pistols, updates to the 1911 frame, and advances in different cartridges (45 G.A.P., 40 S&W). With the advances in technology I bet he would like a kid in a candy store today.
ReplyDeleteYou really need to make a road trip to come and visit John's workshop, on display in a museum dedicated to his life and craft. There are prototypes and first builds of many of his guns. The museum is a great place to spend an afternoon if it is too hot to go to the desert to go shooting.
ReplyDeleteLet me know when you can make it, I'll inflate the air mattress for you.
Just out of curiosity, I wondered what would show up on Google for John Moses Browning (besides the obligatory Wikipedia link) and this came up at top: http://www.northstar.k12.ak.us/schools/ryn/projects/inventors/browning/browning.html
ReplyDeleteIf Sarah Brady saw that she would have an embolism. I thought pictures of guns on a school web site would be verboten in Obama's America. I guess he'll get around to that after we all get our unicorns.
Texas is Texas.
ReplyDeleteBut the .25 ACP is the worst thing he ever invented. Most of the rest of them are pretty useful.
What would JMB do today? I have been an engineer on the B-2, F-35, B-1B, F-20, F-16, F-15, as well as an assortment of missiles, guided bombs and pods. But my patent is for a rifle operating system.
Westinghouse developed the pneumatic brake system used on trains. Before that, brake men had to run from rooftop to rooftop setting brakes by hand, in rain, sleet, and snow, and occasionally would fall off. The pneumatic brake system is still used on trucks and trains today, with the brakes on all the time unless turned off.
My point, and I do have one, is that JMB was not near as special as some may suppose. There are thousands of great designers, and i have meet hundreds of them.
Patent 6,076,138
I think, were JMB alive today, he'd be doing interesting things with caseless ammo and compressed liquid fuel, a la cordless nail guns. I think he'd manage, even in this day of Nothing New Under The Sun, to amaze us with something we hadn't seen or thought of before, that would work.
ReplyDeleteI think that, if John Browning were alive today, he'd be clawing frantically at the inside of his coffin...
ReplyDelete(17 posts in and no one made that joke yet?)
Tam,
ReplyDeleteWhat about the Winchester 1906 pump-action rifle? Or does that not count because it's a descendant of the 1890?
(Why, yes, I *am* pumping up the # of JMB creations I own, why do you ask?) :)
I believe when the French government hired Browning, they were the ones that specified that the new pistol include a trigger disconnect. My knowledge is based on a consensus of Browning GP fans. Unfortunately, I don't have a cite.
ReplyDeleteI always wonder about the credit to Browning for Winchester's later lever-action guns. The design seems to be a derivation of D. B. Wesson's earlier one. If we're going to include derivatives, I can say with confidence that every self-loading pistol I've ever owned is a derivative from three of Browning's most famous designs.
You know what would be easier? Making a list of auto-loader pistols that don't borrow an idea from a Browning design. Most of them are evolutionary dead-ends anyway. This is all I could come up with:
* P-08 Luger
* Dardick pistol
* "Metal Storm" pistol
Tamara:
ReplyDelete100 percent agree, but a minor nit. Overall, I think that Beretta's rotation barrel/breach is slightly better than JMB's tilting design. Yes it is more complex (JMB didn't have CNC machinery), but it makes front sight and screw on silencers so much easier.
"Overall, I think that Beretta's rotation barrel/breach is slightly better than JMB's tilting design."
ReplyDelete1) I'd quibble with the "better" part, save maybe if you wished to suppress the weapon (although you still have to account for the suppressor's added mass damping barrel motion, which is required for unlocking/function.)
2) It ain't either "Beretta's" rotating barrel short recoil system. It was first used on the Roth-Steyr of 1907, AFAIK, and has subsequently been used on the Knight/Stoner/Colt 2000 and the SIG-Mauser M2, as well as the Beretta Cougar and 9000...
Don Meaker:
ReplyDeleteThere are thousands of great designers....
It's not that he was great, it's that he was consistently great.
I always thought it interesting that Browning always used some form of vertical locking bolt in all of his locked breech firearms, whether it was the Winchester 1885 single shot, the 1894 lever action, the 1911 pistol or the M2 machine gun. Can anyone think of a rotating bolt in any Browning designs?
ReplyDeleteOne other thing, the story goes that young JMB designed the rifle that became the Winchester 1885 after was repairing a single shot rifle when his father quipped that JMB could deign a better gun. Anyone willing to guess what that other rifle was?