Browning wasn't first

[KWK]

In a book I'm reading on Ballard rifles is mentioned an older book, The Crack Shot by Edward Barber, published in 1868. He describes many of the new fangled metallic cartridge rifles of his day, both repeaters and single shots, and one of the single shots is the National.

While Browning is given credit for the lock up of the 1886 and 1892 Winchester, here's the same lock up system used in a single shot 2 decades before. The lever is attached to both the breech block and the locking block, with the movement of the lever first dropping the locking block and then pivoting on the locking block to throw back the breech. This gun uses a side hammer, which is pushed to half cock by the breech sliding rearward. Lacking a magazine, the user drops the next cartridge into the action and closes the lever before bringing the hammer to full cock.

He praises the action for it's strength and simplicity, a feature of the later Browning models as well. Browning's trick, of course, was to split the locking block in two so that the breech block could extend rearward far enough to cock a centrally hung hammer.

Google has two scans of this book in its library. The National is described starting on page 163.

I have to wonder if other types of machinery had employed this locking mechanism even before this.

By the way, he has a very low opinion of the Henry and the then new Winchester.

[marlinman93]

Browning was a firearms genius, but he was also a student of firearms in general. He was able to look at a lot of firearms sold thru the Browning Bros. shop, and take tidbits of other's designs, and incorporate them into new designs he offered. That still took a genius to apply other designs into his, but as you mention he wasn't always first.
If you look at Browning's semiauto shotgun design that Remington and FN first built, it's obvious that he took existing pump shotgun design features, and incorporated existing blowback designs into operating the mechanism, instead of manually pumping the action. Pure genius, but only in his ability to adapt other's designs into a new design for himself.

[piller]

Enzo Ferrari wasn't the first. Buck wasn't the first. Zero Hour Bomb Company wasn't the first to make fishing reels, although they were the first to have the Secret Service destroy a fishing reel.
It isn't always who is first. Sometimes it comes down to who can adapt it to what the customer wants.

[KWK]

I don't know if Browning would have had occasion to see one of these. It wouldn't surprise me if he came up with the mechanism independently. It sounds as if that single shot from the immediate post war years was submitted for a possible government contract, but the Trapdoor won out as the last cartridge single shot for the Army. Were I feeling more energetic I'd pull the patent for the '86 and see what they claimed, but as I recall he mentioned not the general motion (which obviously had been around for a while) but the two separate locking blocks.

[marlinman93]

Sometimes it comes down to who can adapt it to what the customer wants.

And sometimes it came down to whether the company stealing the design was large enough that the party it was stolen from didn't have the resources to ever win in a law suit. There have been hundreds of cases from long before there was a patent office, and after, of people who came up with an idea, and it was simply built by a big company and no royalties paid to the inventor.

[piller]

Sometimes it comes down to who can adapt it to what the customer wants.

And sometimes it came down to whether the company stealing the design was large enough that the party it was stolen from didn't have the resources to ever win in a law suit. There have been hundreds of cases from long before there was a patent office, and after, of people who came up with an idea, and it was simply built by a big company and no royalties paid to the inventor.

Marlinman, that is why the Japanese trains get more power from their electric motors than what the Americans can. The American who figured out how to get more power than what the scientific formula used by all textbooks shows possible had had several ideas stolen at the U.S. patent office. He figured out which variable that the formula did not take into account. At a certain point, a variable can be introduced which actually increases the possible output. He sold it to the Japanese. The inventor has never given the U.S. his secret. So far, no one has duplicated it.

[CowboyTutt]

Piller, that is really interesting information, in fact the whole thread is very interesting! McPherson once told me that J.B. did invent a front locking levergun that is now and has been for some time, public domain. Sure seems like someone would have snapped that up to make it if so. Meanwhile we still have the BLR and past Win '88 which are both very strong actions. -Tutt

[KWK]

McPherson once told me that J.B. did invent a front locking levergun...

Yes, I've come across that one. It's US patent 324,296 from 1885. Its lock up is somewhat like the modern Browning T-bolt .22 rimfire. The locking lug pops up out of the top of the bolt. I have a copy of Houze's book on engineering development at Winchester, and I'll try to look up tomorrow if a prototype was ever made.

[CowboyTutt]

That would be waaaaay cool!!!!! Thanks KWK! -Tutt

[KWK]

I took a quick look tonight through Houze's book, Winchester Repeating Arms Company: Its History & Development from 1865 to 1981. I didn't see a prototype off that front locking action patent. There were other patents and experimental Winchesters. There was a patent for a Peabody style action made into a repeater with a tubular magazine. There was a variation on the 1895 that was rather sleeker. Some cold winter day I'll sit down for a few hours and better digest what's there. It's not that expensive a book on the used market, about $25; I got my copy that route.