famous developers of firearms and ammunition

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as for actual design..... that would be keltec with their dual magazine shotgun and boberg.
 
Mikhail Kalashnikov
John Browning
Samuel Colt
Sergei Simonov
Gaston Glock
John Garand
Bill Ruger
Kijiro Nambu
Eugene Stoner
Georg Luger


I am sure there are many others, but these were the ones that came to mind.

For modern firearms developers, most are just re-using what the above people designed.
 
hq said:
Gaston Glock has always been a great marketer and an extremely tough businessman. He didn't invent anything, only combined a number of earlier, lesser-known designs in a then-new polymer frame and had the mechanism perfected for reliability. Developer... maybe, in a loose sense of the word.
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A lot of that could be said about Samuel Colt too. I think you give Glock too little and too much credit. He didn't even "invent" the polymer frame; the HK VP70 had one years earlier. Perhaps "inventing" is itself overrated; you can only lever ammunition into and out of a chamber so many different ways, after all.
But he did design the Glock pistol itself, which has become as synonymous with "handgun" as the Colt SAA used to be. Rappers sing about it, for chrissakes.
 
Gaston did not design the pistol itself.
Gaston provided the money for the actual designers to design the pistol. :)
Denis
 
DPris said:
Gaston did not design the pistol itself.
Gaston provided the money for the actual designers to design the pistol. :)
Denis
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Ah. Did not know that. And I see here on Wikipedia:

Glock became aware of the Austrian Army's planned procurement and in 1982 assembled a team of Europe's leading handgun experts from military, police and civilian sport shooting circles to define the most desirable characteristics in a combat pistol.[5] Within three months, Glock developed a working prototype that combined proven mechanisms and traits from previous pistol designs.
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So the Glock represents what the best minds in firearms could come up with working together. Probably the most successful "design by committee" ever!
 
Edward Boyd Stallard


In September 1987, the new Maverick blowback 9mm pistol was quietly introduced to the American market. The concept of Ohioan Ed Stallard, the new pistol combined some of the design features of early pocket pistols with a full-power cartridge and late 20th century manufacturing techniques.

Ignoring current trends, the pistol has a single-action trigger mechanism, single-column magazine and thumb safety on the left only. The simple striker firing mechanism also uses the firing pin as an ejector. The design offers few surprises to those familiar with the blowback pocket automatics of many decades go.
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Yup, just like Steve Jobs inventing the iPod, IPhone, and IPad ;)

"I am sure there are many others, but these were the ones that came to mind."
Probably because their names are funny-lookin', but Czech designers don't get nearly enough credit. First perfected LMG (ZB30 series), first perfected HMG (ZB37 series), first telescoping bolt SMG (ZB26 series), better alternatives to the AK and PK series (VZ58 and UK59), and even more basic technologies going back centuries before.

Dieudonne Saive, of FAL and Hi Power fame, was also a master, and then you have Johnson and Pedersen who managed to never get past the starving-artist phase to true stardom, despite a plethora of fantastic (and widely plagiarized) ideas.

The designers I am most impressed with at present are Arne Boberg and to a different extent, Kevin Brittingham of ACC for popularizing suppressors second only to Henry Maxim (a lot of this is perception, but he seemed to be the best known name way out in front of the current suppressor development wave, taking risks and staking claims). Boberg is basically doing the Tucker Car but with firearms, and without the legal/financial shenanigans. Created a novel design, teamed up with a shop to introduce it, and now promotes and stands behind it personally, to pretty much universal praise from owners. Even after hitting one home run, he continues to develop the brand and product line himself, and maintains surprisingly close contact with his market and existing customers so as to best suit their whimsy. Class act of a small business/man if I've ever seen one, and definitely deserving of patronage.

TCB
 
Bill Alexander, Founder of Alexander Arms.

Couple of cartridges to his name are the 6.5 Grendel and the 50 Beowolf.
 
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WVGunman said:
I think you give Glock too little and too much credit. He didn't even "invent" the polymer frame
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If you read my text a bit more carefully, you'll probably realize that I made no such claim or implication. I haven't researched the subject that much, but a good friend of mine was a Glock distributor in a number of countries during the introduction of the original first gen G17. As a firearms historian he used to call it copycat or b*stard, after realizing that there was absolutely nothing original in its design. I think he nailed it; Glocks are very good utilitarian guns but calling them (or the businessman who made them happen) innovative is a stretch.
 
hq said:
If you read my text a bit more carefully, you'll probably realize that I made no such claim or implication. I haven't researched the subject that much, but a good friend of mine was a Glock distributor in a number of countries during the introduction of the original first gen G17. As a firearms historian he used to call it copycat or b*stard, after realizing that there was absolutely nothing original in its design. I think he nailed it; Glocks are very good utilitarian guns but calling them (or the businessman who made them happen) innovative is a stretch.
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I read your text very carefully, and you clearly implied with your phrasing he invented the polymer frame. I know what you wrote, not what you meant.
But it doesn't matter; I have already said I was a bit short in my knowledge of the history of this matter. As usual, the truth was more interesting!
I don't really agree that combining old things in new ways can't be called "innovation," but that's more a philosophical discussion than a historical one. I suspect that until we have some kind of paradigm shift in firearms technology as monumental and fundamental as the self-contained cartridge was in the late 19th Century, Glock's brand of innovation might be all we get.
 
WVGunman said:
I read your text very carefully, and you clearly implied with your phrasing he invented the polymer frame. I know what you wrote, not what you meant.
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Please. Behave yourself. Niggling about what you think you read, in spite of my very clear and univocal statement of "combined" and "in a then-new polymer frame", isn't The High Road.
 
One of the first high performance ammo makers was SUPER VEL. The founder was LEE JURRAS. He was producing ammo when the standard .38 Special police load was a 200 gr lead round nose.
 
hq said:
Please. Behave yourself. Niggling about what you think you read, in spite of my very clear and univocal statement of "combined" and "in a then-new polymer frame", isn't The High Road.
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As Limbaugh put it, "words mean things." Yes, "then-new," within a sentence about a firearms innovator, and what he really did, implies plainly that HE invented it.
And claiming that it's okay to be vague just because a lot of people on this board are not very erudite is no excuse.

WVGunman, who once taught English for a living.
 
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