120 years of Browning designs

If you guys want another of his engineering marvels put your hand on a Superposed the lock up is that of a bank vault.

Nom, no arguments from me. A Rem 11 would be fine, but I don't have one. Just the Auto-5.
Mav, you are truly an evil person -- yeah I noticed it now in re-reading your post. I always forget that little rifle SA22 too. And, yeah, somehow I don't think the Model 8 will see any type of reissue - ever.
OneSeven - yeah, you missed - nothing. That image you posted is inspiring.

It was. In fact, if you look back to Browning's original concept for what would become the Hi Power, or P35, it even looks quite different from the product we know today. A rare prototype shows that Browning originally put the safety on the back end of the slide. Very odd indeed. However it is possible that the Colt patents he had sold had expired after his death, some features of which were included in the final design. This may partly account for the different in function and appearance.

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Today's BHP not not only LOOKS different from JMB's original design, it is different. The original HP design was a striker-fired, single stack weapon. (Browning thought 7-8 rounds were enough.)

Browning died in Belgium in 1926, while working for FN. Browning's son sold the rights/patents to FN. Dieudonné Saive, a Belgian designer who was JMB's assistant at the time, took over development of the gun after JMB's death, and eventually became FN's chief designer.

In the BHP redesign and development, Saive incorporated some of the best features of other Browning designs (which were no longer protected by patents). As best I can tell, it was Saive who changed the BHP to a hammer-fired design, and he was the one who created the first double-stack magazine in a service pistol. (Saive developed a working model for an older gun as proof of concept.) There's a LOT of Browning in the BHP design, but it wasn't all from the original design concept for the BHP. Saive was able to use other Browning ideas in the revised BHP, along with a few of his own. (Saive apparently had a knack for improving Browning's designs -- often subtly changing them so that they operated more rapidly and reliably -- particularly important with machine guns.)

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One thing almost everyone misses is that much of Browning's reputation stems from the determination of the Colt, Winchester and FN patent attorneys to patent everything they could think of in the Browning designs. Even such a seemingly simple thing as screws to hold on a pistol grip were patented, so competitors had to come up with some complex and not very good alternatives.

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Well, looking back on the last 100 years of firearms history & design.

Was that a bad thing?
Or, further proof of JMB's genius.
And the companies that bought his patent's.

He was cranking things out nobody else had thought of yet, faster then the imitators could keep up, or come up with them.

It saved us a world of hurt from a world full of inferior copies, and blatant rip-off's of Brownings genius.

rc

Nice Collection.

Where's your M2?

How about adding a BAR?

A proliferate and influential design used in the USA and throughout the world as a first line weapon for over 50 years and remained in use by militaries for longer than that.

Hi, rc,

A bad thing? Not at all, but it resulted in the competition's guns being more complex, more costly and often less reliable and durable. That enhanced the reputation of Browning's guns and of Browning himself, not to mention increasing his income.

Jim

I think that John Browning was the greatest firearms designer/ inventor for one simple reason. He had to pioneer almost everything he invented. He had very little past history to look back upon and study, to see what has worked in the past and what hasn't. Kalashnikov, Stoner, Bill Ruger, Glock, all of those poeple had a long history of firearms design to study and look at, before proceeding with their work.
Kalashnikov could look at Garand's design and study it, like wise with the STG 44, and Walthers' attempt at an automatic rifle, not to mention earlier Swedish and Mexican (Mondragon) designs.
Stoner had the Swedish Ljungman (hope I spelled that right but I bet I didn't)and Egyptian Hakim designs to study.
When Bill Ruger came out with his bolt actions and his #1 they were more refinements and modifications to existing designs than groundbreaking now designs. People had been making bolt actions and single shot rifles for decades, and Mr. Ruger could look back on those guns and study what worked and what didn't and he knew before what he started what NOT to put into his designs. That is why Ruger bolt guns don't cock on closing and have 1891 Mauser type extractors.
In summary, I don't think we will ever have another John Browning among us, and that is too bad....