The firearms invented by John Browning are well known, yet few really know much about the man himself. Here are some highlights:
John Moses Browning has to be considered as the greatest firearms inventor of all time, and his creations have become legendary. He was born in Ogden, Utah on January 23, 1855, the son of Jonathan Browning, a Mormon gunsmith, and Elizabeth Clark, one of Jonathan’s three wives. Growing up in a gun shop, young John took to design work early, building a single shot rifle for his brother Matt at the age of 14. In 1879, following the death of his father, John and his brothers started their own gunmaking business, where John converted foot-powered machinery to steam energy. He also married and received his first patent for an underlever single-shot rifle in that year.
Demand for John’s rifle far exceeded the Browning Gun Factory’s ability to produce it. A Winchester salesman picked up one of the rifles and recommended it enthusiastically to his management. Soon Winchester bought the rights to manufacture it. The money from this first transaction enabled John to concentrate on inventing rather than production. Subsequently, John sold quite a number of his firearms designs to Winchester. Some best sellers were the Model 1886 lever action rifle, the Model 1887 lever action shotgun, the Model 1897 pump shotgun, and the Models 1892, 1894 and 1895 lever action rifles.
Noticing that the expanding gas from one of his rifles blew grass in front of it, John got the idea to use that energy to power self-loading arms. After some experimentation, the result was two machine guns, both of which were sold to the U.S. military. His Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) was put into production too late for widespread use in WWI, but was used extensively throughout WWII and the Korean War. The magnificent .50 caliber machine gun, the M2HB (affectionately known as the Ma Deuce), is still in global service with U.S. forces. John was not successful in negotiating the royalty rights to a recoil-operated semiauto shotgun design with Winchester or Remington, so he traveled to Belgium, where Fabrique Nationale de Armes de Guerre (FN) accepted his terms and production began there. It was famously known as the Browning Auto-5. Remington later got on board and produced the gun as its Model 11. Variants were subsequently made by many other companies as patents expired. Browning’s .22 automatic rifle is still being made nearly 100 years after its first production in 1914. The Superposed Shotgun was invented in 1922 and started manufacture in 1931. It’s another timeless classic.
Browning originated the principle of a reciprocating slide that encloses the barrel of self-loading pistols, and from 1900 on, invented a number of classic pistols in calibers ranging from .25 to .45. Perhaps the most famous was his Model 1911 semiauto, first manufactured by Colt and which is still in limited service with the U.S. armed forces after 100 years. Versions of this gun are now made by countless manufacturers, including Smith & Wesson. It continues to be a proven standard and enormously popular. His initial design for the Browning High Power pistol was subsequently perfected by his understudy Dieudonné Saive following Browning’s unfortunate death of a heart attack at his FN workbench in Liege, Belgium on November 26, 1926. Browning’s son Val continued in his father’s footsteps and he himself was awarded 48 patents over his lifetime.
The Browning legacy continues to this day in the many firearms throughout the world that utilize solid principles stemming from John’s ideas. The state of Utah made the 1911 pistol its state firearm and celebrated January 24, 2011 as John Browning day, honoring his great-grandson Christopher with a formal presentation of the resolution at the state capitol. John Browning had few peers in the firearms world, and his incredible body of work will probably never be equaled.
John
Probably the best zombie I ever saw! Thank you for resurrecting it. It should be required reading for all shooters.
