GUNMASTER

PHOTOGRAPHS BY COURTESY BROWNING ARMS CO.

In the early 1900's the little city of Ogden, Utah, in the shadow of the Wasatch range, still had an occasional reminder of its primitive days. I recall gazing in awe at the fearsome carcass of a black bear shot in the mountains near town and hung head down from a meat hook in front of the butcher shop on the main street. This was about the time we stood and gaped at a bulletin pasted on the win-dow of the newspaper office, proclaiming: EARTHQUAKE LEVELS SAN FRANCISCO.Yet as close as across the street in a small brick build-ing the makings of another news story of far-reaching inter-est had lain fallow for years. More incredible still, eleven additional years would pass before the American public was even partly informed about the quiet and unassuming man who, in a workshop on this Ogden street, had forged tools to help shape the future of a nation.

This man was John M. Browning, discoverer of the principle of gas operation of automatic arms, inventor of the automatic pistol and machine gun, and acknowledged the greatest innovator in American gun history.

As wondering Ogden folk regarded the California disaster bulletin on that April day in 1906, the achievements of their own John Browning already had been heard 'round the world. In Cuba his newly invented machine gun had helped forces under Theodore Roosevelt win the battle of Santiago in the Spanish-American War. In Peking, U.S. Marines had quelled the Boxer uprising with the aid of this automatic marvel of rapid fire. In western America every man who had pulled the trigger of a Winchester made since 1886 was almost certain to have fired a gun designed by John M. Browning. And now, in the spring of 1906, the two hundred and fifty thousandth Browning-invented automatic pistol had just been turned out by the factory.

Yet the name John M. Browning was still unknown to all but relatively few Americans.

Though recognition of the Ogden inventor might well have been established long before 1906 it should have come the previous year, when the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia bestowed on Browning the John Scott Legacy Medal for his invention of the automatic pistol. But not even this opportunity for bringing long-overdue attention to bear on twentieth century America's outstanding arms genius was realized.

In 1911 the United States Ordnance Department officially adopted the Browning Colt-manufactured .45 automatic pistol as regulation side arm for the Army, Navy and National Guard. It still is today for all the U.S. Armed Forces. Not until 1915, however, did a magazine in this country take any considerable notice of the man who was the master gun designer of modern times with the four largest arms-producing companies here and one of the biggest in Europe turning out products of his invention.

There is more. Much more. The achievement record of the wizard of Ogden prior to the belated general recognition he received could have filled a book. We have mentioned the enormously successful Browning Winchestersof which the '94 Model lever-action repeating rifle and carbine were far and away the most popular guns of their type ever sold. Hand in hand, the '94 Model Winchester carbine and the Colt single-action six shooter were the standard firearms in the latter days of the frontier West. Today the '94 Model Winchester carbine is still the gun most likely to be found in western saddle scabbards.

Admiral Peary carried a '92 Model carbine on his final successful expedition to the North Pole in 1909. A '95 Model Winchester .405 box-magazine rifle was the favorite of Theodore Roosevelt on his African and South American big game hunting trips. All were guns designed by John M. Browning, the great gunsmith of Ogden, Utah.

By 1912 Browning's automatic pistol had broken all records for the production of small arms. One million had been made at the Fabrique d'Armes de Guerre of Liege, Belgium, where manufacture of the Utahn's invention had begun in 1900. The gun had been made continuously from the original design, with no changes in basic parts. In honor of the occasion, King Albert conferred on Browning the title of "Chevalier de l'Order de Leopold." Thenceforth he was entitled, at least in that country, to be addressed "Sir John M. Browning."

There is no reason to believe he could not have originally stipulated that the name Browning be stamped on every arm of his design or invention regardless of the manufacturer. But this was never done except for his automatic pistols made in Belgium, on each of which was stamped "Browning's Patent."

We must go back to 1831, five years before Samuel Colt established his first revolver factory in Paterson, New Jersey, to understand John M. Browning's heritage of gunmaking from his father. Jonathan Browning, born 1805 in Tennessee, moved to the Kentucky mountain country while a boy. This was the day of the Kentucky long rifle and the best way to acquire one was to make it yourself. While still in his 'teens young Jonathan had his own gunshop and was well on the way toward proficiency in the craft of his choice. He made his first rifle in 1831.

Moving with the westward tide of the times, Jonathan Browning established a modest gunsmithing business in Nauvoo, Illinois. But he soon pushed on to Kanesville, Iowa, near Council Bluffs, setting up shop shortly before gold was discovered in California. There with the aid of a foot-power lathe Jonathan produced, among other guns, two repeating rifles. The first featured a "five-shot magazine consisting of a rectangular bar of iron with holes to accommodate the hand loads, the bar sliding through an aperture at the breech from right to left and being manually operated." The second rifle employed a six-shot revolving cylinder rotated by the action of cocking the hammer. This was the principle involved in Samuel Colt's invention of the first successful revolver. Colt had also made revolving cylinder rifles in 1836.

After two years in Kanesville the Browning family embarked again on the trail west, this time with Jonathan as captain of a wagon train bound for the Mormon settlements in Utah. Safely there, he set up a gunshop in Ogden The Browning Brothers gun factory and store in Ogden is shown here as it appeared in 1881. This is the store for which the brothers and helpers made, by hand, 600 Browning single-shot rifles for the first stock. Not one of the guns was sold until all 600 had been finished. John M. Browning is at left, standing in doorway. Beside him, on the right, is his brother, Matthew S. Browning.

These are the Winchester rifles and carbines which were designed by John M. Browning. At top is Browning's first commercial rifle (of which he made 600 before selling one). It is a single-shot. Following, down, are the '86 rifle, '90 .22 calibre rifle, '92 carbine, '92 rifle, '94 carbine, and the famed '94 rifle.

In 1851. In the living quarters in connection with the shop, John Moses Browning was born January 23, 1855.

The boy John quickly revealed an aptitude for the art of arms-making far beyond influence of any hereditary talent or his environment. At fourteen he had fashioned his first rifle, followed by another made especially for his brother Matthew, four years his junior.

When he was twenty-four, John was issued his first "Letters Patent," based on the unique features of a singleshot, lever-action rifle. This became the famous '79 Model Winchester Single-Shot. Produced in a number of calibres, it proved widely popular and established the inventor's long association with the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.

Jonathan Browning died in 1879, about the time young John took out his first patent. Responsibility for the family now rested on the two brothers, John and Matthew. Guns were prime necessities of western life, and these young men who had been closely associated with firearms all their lives believed they should establish a small factory and store devoted to the arms trade.

Accordingly in 1881 this was done, with John in charge of production and anything else relating to mechanics. Matt, as he was always called, was in charge of the business end-an arrangement that was to prove a happy one. They had determined on an ambitious undertaking to start off the new company: they would manufacture 600 of the '79 single-shot rifles for the store stock, and none would be sold until the display racks held that number.To accomplish this by the slow, tedious process of handwork was a monumental task. With the principal assistance of their half-brothers, Ed and Sam Browning, the entrepreneurs doggedly stuck to the project, though there were undoubtedly many times when they would have liked to accept the offers to buy that came during the nearlythree years of work that the difficult task required. At length the goal of 600 rifles was reached. And now came an unforeseen opportunity they could not afford to let pass. The Winchester company, which had been following John Browning's progress with interest, offered to purchase all 600 guns and the patent, with full manufacturing rights. John and Matt accepted. Thus another link in a business connection that was to last for many years was wrought.

Next move was the purchase in 1885 of a two-story structure not far from the old location. Remodeling converted the lower floor into a complete sporting goods store, including popular firearms makes. Machinery, tools and equipment from the old shop were set up on the second floor. Here the steadily developing prime mover in his art continued work on a rifle action for which he had secured a patent the previous year. This also was sold to Winchester and became the celebrated '86 Model lever-action repeater that in a few years dominated the market for repeating rifles. Patentable fea-ture and important improvement in this gun was the sliding vertical lock perfectly sealing the joint between breech and barrel with the simplicity of operation and economy of parts that were becoming the hallmark of John M. Browning creations.

At this time the .22 rim-fire cartridge was coming into favor for varmint and small game shooting. The Winchester people asked Browning to design a repeating rifle chambered for this calibre. So far no positive method of handling the small .22 case had been devised for a repeating action. Ere long the inventor sent to the factory his own drawings of a pump-action rifle he was certain would do the job. Surprisingly, the plant technicians did not agree with him. It won't work, said they in effect. Browning seldom had use for blueprints. He could usually tool a new gun faster than he could draw it out. After considerable hard work and whistling he had turned out the pilot model from the original drawings. "This is the gun I showed in my plans," he wrote. "You said it wouldn't work, but it seems to shoot pretty fair to me."

The '90 Model Winchester .22 went into production soon afterward. It outsold for many years all other makes of .22 rifles combined, and is still popular. This was my first gun, bought from the Browning Brothers Store a good many years after it was introduced, but while John Brown-ing still worked and whistled in his shop upstairs.

John M. Browning was six feet three, with a close-clipped white mustache then and short-trimmed hair show-ing beneath a hat worn much of his waking time, I suspect, with the bald man's instinctive self-consciousness. A theory supported by the fact that he almost never permitted himself photographed hatless. John M. Browning, whose some-times severe, almost stern expression was but a mask cover-ing an innate reserve.

His discovery of the automatic principle by gas opera-tion dates from the fall of 1892, when he was hunting in the marshes near Great Salt Lake. He became aware for the first time of the significant movement of the surround-ing rushes right after each blast of the gun. "After giving this incident some thought," a company publication relates, "he decided that it must be caused by the expanding powder gases following the bullet. Such a discovery intrigued his mechanical mind and he immediately returned to his shop and began to experiment.

"The first step in this experiment," the account continues, "was to take a piece of iron almost 4 inches square, weighing about 5 pounds, and drill a hole in it large enough to permit the bullet to pass through. He then adjust-ed this piece of metal in front of the gun and pulled the trigger. As he had anticipated, the gas pressure that followed the bullet blew this piece of iron some distance from the muzzle of the gun."

That was enough for John Browning. He knew he had something. Next step was to make an experimental model. For this he fitted a concave cap with a hole in the center directly before a rifle muzzle allowing the gas following the bullet to force this cap forward. A rod was then rigged to connect the cap with the gun's action. When the arm was fired the gas-impelled cap pulled the rod forward, actuating a lever mechanism with the same result as in the hand-operated repeater.

Experimenting further the inventor found that a small hole drilled through the underside of the barrel permitted the gas pressure to operate a small piston linked with the actuating mechanism. This was a more efficient mechanization for achieving automatic action and led, together with a great deal more experiment and work, to refinements resulting in the world's first practical and successful gas-operated automatic firearm.

Because of the urgent need for effective weapons in the Spanish-American War, Browning applied his automatic principle to a gas-operated machine gun. This revolutionary new gun, firing ten shots per second, was licensed to and produced by Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut, makers also of many other Browning guns-notably his automatic pistols. The Browning automatic was the only machine gun used by the Army and Navy in the Spanish-American conflict, replacing the cumbersome, heavy piece operated by turning a crank.

The Ogden inventor also perfected a machine gun that was recoil-operated and water-cooled, with a hand-driven circulating unit. This gun, patented in 1901 and produced by Colt's, was revived in 1914 with improvements. The U.S. military, however, used the gas-operated Browning machine gun from 1897 to 1914.

And now the hour approached for John Browning's emergence from almost legendary obscurity to a place beside other notable American inventors in some degree of public consciousness. World War I had begun. The enemy had great numbers of the Maxim type machine gun, though its durability depended on excessive weight. Superior weapons for this country's forces were clearly indicated. Accordingly the call went out to arms suppliers and May, 1917, was set for competitive tests.

To these trials John M. Browning brought two new guns. One was a greatly improved model of the earlier recoil-operated and water-cooled machine gun. The new version fired 40,000 rounds without failure-twice as many as required for the test-and was adopted as regulation for the military. The other gun was the Browning Machine Rifle, a weapon that was destined to go through both World War I and II with U.S. forces, then on into the War in Korea. Now known as the "B.A.R." (Browning Automatic Rifle), the arm was an outstanding success at the 1917 tests, firing 600 rounds per minute full automatic, or one shot at a time, by moving a small lever. It too was accepted forthwith. Browning's engineering for these pilot models had been such that tooling could begin immediately. He also adapted the new machine gun to use on fighter air-planes, synchronized to fire between the propeller blades, and for ground anti-aircraft fire. A Browning 37 mm. rapid-firing cannon was brought out a short time later.

With the end of World War I, John Browning turned his hand again to an old labor of love, the creation of fine sporting shotguns. Over the years he had spent more time on these-his automatic shotgun in particular-than on any other single arm. His first shotgun had been a lever-action "scatter gun" for Winchester, followed by the slide action '97 Model. In 1904 he had been issued a patent for the first hammerless repeating take-down shotgun, the No. 520 Stevens. Refinement of his solid breech pump-action shotgun had resulted in the 1915 streamlined Remington Model 17 20-gauge, weighing only 5½ pounds. His crowning achievement in this field was the Browning automatic or autoloading shotgun, a triumph of clean design and workability, requiring full expression of his inventive genius.

It was now 1923. The Browning Arms Company had been formed and offered the inventor's automatic shotgun for sale in this country and abroad. To this product was added John Browning's latest creation, the Superposed-a superbly fashioned and finished sporting shotgun taking its name from having one barrel vertically over the other. These were the guns to carry on the family tradition.

Arrangement had been made for the new Superposed to be made at the Fabrique Nationale in Belgium. The death of Matthew Browning had come almost coincident with John's finishing of the Superposed. Now, in 1926, the old gunmaster again went to Liege, this time for the start of production on the gun closest to his affections.

Thus was a first love also to be his last. He was still in Belgium when stricken by a heart attack. And then John Moses Browning was dead.