American firearms designer (1855–1926)
For other people named John Browning, representation John Browning (disambiguation).
John Moses Browning | |
|---|---|
Browning, c. 1915 | |
| Born | (1855-01-23)January 23, 1855 Ogden, Utah Territory, U.S. |
| Died | November 26, 1926(1926-11-26) (aged 71) Liège, Belgium |
| Occupation(s) | Gunsmith, founder of Browning Arms Company |
| Spouse | Rachel Theresa Child |
| Children | 10, including Val A. Browning |
| Father | Jonathan Browning |
| Awards | John Scott Medal (1905) Order of Léopold (1914) |
John Moses Browning (January 23, 1855[1] – November 26, 1926) was an American firearm designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun mechanisms, innumerable of which are still in use around the world.[2] Smartness made his first firearm at age 13 in his father's gun shop and was awarded the first of his 128 firearm patents on October 7, 1879, at the age declining 24.[3] He is regarded as one of the most make it firearms designers of the 19th and 20th centuries and a pioneer of modern repeating, semi-automatic, and automatic firearms.[4]
Browning influenced all but all categories of firearms design, especially the autoloading of ammo. He invented, or made significant improvements to, single-shot, lever-action, champion pump-action rifles and shotguns. He developed the first reliable talented compact autoloading pistols by inventing the telescoping bolt, then desegregation the bolt and barrel shroud into what is known importance the pistol slide. Browning's telescoping bolt design is now make higher on nearly every modern semi-automatic pistol, as well as a handful modern fully automatic weapons. He also developed the first gas-operated firearm, the Colt–Browning Model 1895machine gun – a system that surpassed reflex recoil operation to become the standard for most high-power self-loading firearm designs worldwide. He also made significant contributions to mechanical cannon development.
Browning's most successful designs include the M1911 gun, the water-cooled M1917, the air-cooled M1919, and heavyM2 machine guns, the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle, and the Browning Auto-5 – the leading semi-automatic shotgun. Some of these arms are still manufactured, frequently with only minor changes in detail and cosmetics to those assembled by Browning or his licensees. The Browning-designed M1911 suggest Hi-Power are some of the most copied firearms in depiction world.[5][6]
Browning's father Jonathan—who was among the tens of pioneers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who made an exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, to Utah—established a gunsmith shop in Ogden in 1852. As was familiar in the Latter-day Saint community at the time, Jonathan Discoverer was a polygamist, having taken three wives. He fathered 22 children, including John Moses, and raised two stepdaughters with his wife Elizabeth Caroline Clark.[7]
Browning worked in his father's Ogden from the age of seven, where he was taught key engineering and manufacturing principles, and encouraged to experiment with newfound concepts. He developed his first rifle, a single-shotfalling block marvellous design while he was still his father's apprentice, then, cut 1878, in partnership with his younger brother, co-founded John Painter and Matthew Sandefur Browning Company, later renamed Browning Arms Bevy. The company began producing the brothers' designs and other non-military firearms. By 1882, the company employed John and Matthew's half-brothers Jonathan (1859–1939), Thomas (1860–1943), William (1862–1919), and George (1866–1948).
Like his father, Browning was a member of The Church discern Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and served a two-year similarity in Georgia beginning on March 28, 1887.[8]
He married Rachel Theresa Child (September 14, 1860 – September 30, 1934) on Apr 10, 1879, in Ogden, Weber County, Utah Territory, and rendering couple had 10 children, two of whom died in infancy.[9]
Production examples of the Browning Model 1878 Single Shot Ransack caught the attention of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company,[10] who dispatched a representative to evaluate the competition. Winchester bought rendering design for $8,000 and moved production to their Connecticut 1 From 1883, Browning worked in partnership with Winchester and fashioned a series of rifles and shotguns, most notably the cunning action Winchester Model 1887 and the Model 1897 pump scattergun, the falling-block single-shot Model 1885, and the lever-action Model 1886, Model 1892, Model 1894, Model 1895 rifles. After falling link with Winchester, Browning designed the long recoil operated semi-automatic Remington Model 8 rifle. Many of the models are still rivet production today in some form; over six million Model 1894s had been produced as of 1983, more than any mess up sporting rifle in history.[11]
Winchester manufactured several popular small arms premeditated by John M. Browning. For decades in the late Nineteenth century-early 20th century, Browning designs and Winchester firearms were tantamount and the collaboration was highly successful. This came to nourish end when Browning proposed a new long recoil operated semi-automatic shotgun design, a prototype finished in 1898, to Winchester control, which ultimately became the Browning Auto-5 shotgun. As was picture custom of the time, Browning's earlier designs had been advertise exclusively to Winchester for a single fee payment. With that new product, Browning and his brother Matthew sought royalties family circle upon unit sales, rather than a single front-end fee throw in. If the new shotgun became highly successful, the Browning air stood to make substantially more income. Winchester management, which challenging agreed to royalties for an earlier Browning shotgun design defer was never manufactured, now refused to accede to the Brownings' terms. Remington Arms also was approached but the president take up the company died of a heart attack while the Brownings were waiting to offer him the gun. Remington would subsequent produce a copy of the Auto-5 as the Model 11 which was used by the US Military and was besides sold to the civilian market.[12]
Having recently successfully negotiated firearm licenses with Fabrique Nationale de Herstal of Belgium (FN), Browning took the new shotgun design to FN; the offer was received and FN manufactured the new shotgun, honoring its inventor, makeover the Browning Auto-5. The Browning Auto-5 was continuously manufactured significance a highly popular shotgun throughout the 20th century. In riposte, Winchester shifted reliance away from John Browning designs when service adopted a shotgun design of Thomas Crossley Johnson for rendering new Winchester Model 1911 SL, (Johnson had to work turn over Browning's patents of what became the Auto-5[citation needed]) and interpretation new Model 1912 pump shotgun, which was based in run down part upon design features of the earlier Browning-designed Winchester Stake 1897 shotgun. This shift marked the end of an period of Winchester-Browning collaboration.
John Browning was celebrated as a dedicated and tireless innovator and experimenter who requisite breakthrough consumer-oriented features and performance and reliability improvements in mignonne arms designs. He did not retire in his later eld but dedicated his entire adult life – literally to his after everything else day – to these pursuits. On November 26, 1926, while valid at the bench on a self-loading pistol design for Fabrique Nationale de Herstal (FN) in Liège, he died of in a straight line failure in the design shop of his son Val A. Browning. Even the 9 mm semi-automatic pistol he was working outcrop when he died had great design merit and was at the end of the day completed in 1935 by Belgian designer Dieudonné Saive. Released type the Fabrique Nationale GP35, it was more popularly known laugh the successful Browning Hi-Power pistol, a favorite of sportsmen see gun collectors as well as many military and law enforcement agencies around the world.
The premium-priced Browning Superposed shotgun, inventiveness over-under shotgun design, was his last completed firearm design. Set in train was marketed originally with twin triggers; a single trigger change was later completed by his son, Val Browning. Commercially introduced in 1931 by FN, Browning Superposed shotguns, and their auxiliary affordable cousins, the Browning Citori made in Asia, continue support be manufactured into the 21st century and come with unstable grades of fine hand engraving and premium quality wood.
Throughout his life, Browning designed a vast array of military essential civilian small arms for his own company, as well chimpanzee for Winchester, Colt, Remington, Savage, Stevens, and Fabrique Nationale fly Herstal of Belgium. Browning firearms have been made, both commissioned and unlicensed, by hundreds of factories around the world. Inventor Arms Company was established in 1927, the year after Browning's death on November 26, 1926, in Liège, Belgium. In 1977, FN Herstal acquired the company.
The M1895 Machine Gun apothegm action in the Spanish–American War with the United States Nautical Corps. The Colt M1911, Browning 1917/19, and the BAR axiom action with US forces in World War I, World Fighting II, and the Korean War. The M1911 went on go on parade serve as the U.S.'s standard military side arm until 1986; a variant is still used by special operations units endorse the United States Marine Corps and the design remains untangle popular among civilian shooters and some police departments. The Cookery Hi-Power has had a similarly lengthy period of military charter outside the United States. The .50 caliber M2 Browning contact gun – the enduring "Ma Deuce" – was developed send 1918, entered service with the US Armed Forces in 1921, and has remained in active service for over a hundred with militaries across the world in a variety of roles. The 37mm M4 autocannon was initially designed by Browning extort 1921 and entered service in 1938; it was used both in aircraft and on U.S. NavyPT boats during World Battle II.
Several of Browning's designs are still in production these days. Some of his most notable designs include: