John Browning: Man and Gunmaker

by James Barrington

  What is perhaps even more staggering than the speed with which John produced this first rifle, even bearing in mind the limitations of the shop in which he was working, is the fact that he designed and produced a second gun during 1878 — another lever-action single-shot — though this weapon was not patented, and only one is known to survive.

  Probably the biggest problem faced by John Browning at this time was not the design and making of a gun, but in patenting the finished weapon. No-one in Ogden had much idea what a patent was, far less how to apply for one, so John finally scrawled a note asking how he could patent a gun on an order form and sent it to Schoverling, Daly and Gales, a firm from which he had previously purchased supplies.

  The result of this slightly unorthodox approach was the name of a patent attorney. A similar note was sent to him, and in due course John received a letter explaining the procedure and a copy of a patent application. After studying all the information to hand, John wrote out the design features that he thought were new and therefore patentable, and sent everything back to the patent attorney to be converted into correct legal language. And it worked, because the patent for the rifle, the Browning Single Shot, was granted on 7 October 1879, number 220,271.

  Quite apart from the designing and patenting of this rifle, 1879 was a time of change for John Browning. After his marriage on 10 April 1879, a good deal of his time was spent in building a house for himself and his wife, and in constructing a new shop from which to conduct his business — all on a shoe-string budget. Just over two months later, on 21 June 1879, Jonathan Browning died peacefully. He had simply, John thought, died of weariness, but it was a source of great pleasure both to father and son that Jonathan had lived to see, and to fire, John’s single-shot rifle.

  John had completely taken over the running of the Browning shop in 1878, and had done what he could to improve the business by increasing both the turnover and the prices charged, because Jonathan had always under-priced his work. He was initially assisted only by Matt, but had to enlist the services of his brother Ed (Jonathan Edmund) by the end of 1879. The arrangement worked extremely well, with Ed eventually becoming John’s model-maker.

  Jonathan Browning had acted as a bespoke gunmaker, producing arms to order, but John’s vision of his future was rather different. The fact that he had designed and patented his own gun was common knowledge in Ogden and the surrounding area, and the weapon had already attracted considerable interest and, more importantly, several advance orders. Realizing the worth of the single-shot, John had decided to try to manufacture and sell it from a rudimentary production line, and had purchased the power tools he would need to achieve this for installation in his new shop in Ogden.

  On the afternoon of their second day in the new shop, surrounded by a chaos of machinery, belts, packing cases and the entire contents of the old shop, as John and his brothers looked around wondering where to start, the door opened and an Englishman called Frank Rushton walked in. He was literally the right man in the right place at the right time. He was a gunsmith with years of experience and with a working knowledge of factory practices, and more importantly he was looking for work. Rushton brought his expertise to bear in getting the shop running smoothly, and then worked closely with John in training Matt and Ed in the intricacies of firearms manufacture. To the Brownings, he was invaluable, and he remained with the brothers for the rest of his life.

  Contrary to the frequently-repeated story, John Browning did not refuse to sell any guns until he had produced six hundred models. In fact, he had decided to produce an initial run of twenty-five rifles, but he did not specify a production time-scale. He reasoned that making this number would enable him to work out the most effective routine for the shop, and would also be a sufficient training period for his brothers.

  Three months were to elapse before the rifles were ready, but within a week every one had been sold and the Brownings had several unfilled orders. The price asked for the weapon was $25.00, but most sales realized rather more than this when the usual extras were added in — cover, powder, lead, primers and so on. John was pleased but not surprised, for he had expected to sell the initial production quickly to satisfy local demand, but contrary to his expectations the rifle continued to sell so well that they never subsequently held a stock of more than a dozen completed rifles in the shop.

  Production was erratic at first, but eventually settled down at around two rifles a day, and the shop prospered as far as it was able. They began selling sporting goods as a side-line, and the usual rifle repair work continued to generate a reasonable income.

  John, however, was already looking ahead, and on 20 March 1882 he filed a patent application for a repeating rifle with a tubular magazine, and this patent was granted in July of the same year. He did not attempt to produce this weapon, and instead filed a further patent on 13 September 1882 for another, and completely different, lever-action repeater fitted with a tubular magazine, which he again did not produce. He seems to have regarded these two designs as preliminary stages leading to the creation of what was to become the Model 86 Winchester.

  This was a difficult time for John, because although business was good, the shop was taking up more and more of his working day, and he had precious little time to spare for new designs and he was a weapon designer at heart.

  But in 1883 everything changed.

  5. THE WINCHESTER CONNECTION

  Andrew McAusland was a salesman for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and in 1883 he bought an unfamiliar second-hand single-shot rifle for the sum of fifteen dollars. The barrel bore the legend ‘BROWNING BROS. OGDEN, UTAH U.S.A.’, and the receiver was stamped with the number 463. McAusland clearly recognized the potential of the weapon, for he forwarded it to the Winchester factory where it was passed to the Vice President and General Manager, T G Bennett, who was immediately struck by the quality of the rifle and its sophisticated design.

  Less than a week later, Bennett set out for Ogden with the intention of buying the Browning and all rights to it because it was, he admitted, the best single-shot rifle he had ever seen. He was clearly puzzled when he arrived at the Browning shop, for the seven people working there appeared little more than youths, but when he had established that he was in the right place, he lost no time in coming to the point.

  Bennett and John Browning hardly haggled. Bennett was certainly aware that the tall young man standing before him was something of a prodigy and was prepared to pay almost whatever it cost to secure the rifle and a first option on the high-power repeater John had told him was coming. John was eager to sell, to raise sufficient funds to support the family business so that he could devote more of his time to inventing, and after a brief consultation with Matt, he asked the sum of ten thousand dollars. Bennett proposed eight thousand and offered to include the Brownings on the Winchester jobbing list, and made the offer conditional upon the new repeater being offered to Winchester first.

  John accepted the terms and a cheque for one thousand dollars, and the agreement was formalized in two brief notes written out on the counter of the shop, after which Bennett returned to New Haven. The balance of seven thousand dollars followed in about a month, after Bennett had satisfied himself about the validity and protection of the Browning patent.

  A persistent story is that Winchester also bought up the original production run of the weapon. This was manifestly not the case, as there would have been no more than a dozen rifles in the store on the day Bennett called. What did happen illustrates clearly John’s lack of business knowledge. Faced with both a steady demand for the single-shot and a good stock of parts, the Brownings continued turning out the rifle themselves, not realising that in selling the rights to the weapon to Winchester they had also deprived themselves of the right to manufacture it. The production was finally stopped after John received a letter from Bennett, but not before the entire stock of parts had been utilized.

  Winchester introduced the Browning single-shot rifle in 1885, and it con
tinued in production for thirty-five years in calibres from .22 right up to the extremely powerful .50/95 Winchester Express. It was a highly successful weapon, very popular with hunters, and extremely accurate and reliable. The locking system in particular proved immensely tough, even when the rifle was grossly over-stressed. Its success was marked by the gradual demise of all the other single-shot rifles on the American market, and it was only discontinued by Winchester in 1920 because of the increasing popularity of repeating arms, most of which were also Browning designs.

  6. EARLY RIFLE DEVELOPMENT

  In May 1884 John Browning applied for a patent for his new repeating rifle, and this was granted in October of that year. As if to prove his versatility, during the summer of 1884 he occupied himself in designing another rifle of the same type, but with a completely different operating mechanism.

  Bennett had insisted on being the first manufacturer to see the new Browning model, so after the granting of the patent John and Matt set off to New Haven, John carrying the repeater wrapped in brown paper. In New York City the Brownings were entertained by a salesman from Schoverling, Daly and Gales, a man they knew well from his visits to Ogden and whose familiarity with guns they respected. After seeing the sights, eating a good meal and downing several drinks, they returned to the hotel where John showed him the new repeater. To say the salesman was impressed would be an understatement. It was, he declared, not only the best rifle in the world, but also probably the key to the future of the Winchester Company.

  Bennett, when the Browning brothers saw him at New Haven shortly afterwards, agreed and purchased the patent outright from John for a reputed fifty thousand dollars, a quite enormous sum of money in 1884. But his faith was justified, for the 1886 Winchester, which became known as the Model 71 in 1936, remained in production for seventy one years, selling over 200,000 units, and incidentally, like the later Models 1892 and 1894, becoming familiar the world over from its appearances in countless western films. Indeed, the weapon is still very popular even today, despite production having ceased in 1957.

  As well as buying the 1886, Bennett also asked John if he could design a lever-action repeating shotgun. John replied that he could, but suggested that a slide-action weapon might be preferable, adding that he had already designed such a gun. Bennett was interested, but pressed John to design a lever-action, as that feature had virtually become a Winchester trade-mark. He then asked roughly how long such a gun would take to design, and suggested two years, but John thought he could work a bit faster than that. That conversation took place in October 1884, and the patent on the new gun was filed in June 1885.

  Winchester bought the design and introduced the weapon as the Model 1887. It had a simple, rugged and reliable action, and proved to be the world’s first successful repeating shotgun. It remained in production, though with a minor model change to the Model 1901 at the turn of the century to enable it to handle smokeless powders, until 1920, by which time over 78,000 had been sold.

  It is instructive to realize that, due entirely to Bennett’s visit to Ogden in 1883, Winchester was able to introduce three entirely new weapons in a three year period, all of which went on to become market leaders in their classes and all were solely the product of John Browning’s genius. When the Model 87 went on sale, he was still only thirty-two years old.

  Like Jonathan Browning, John was a Mormon and despite what he knew was his true vocation — designing weapons — he also accepted that he had commitments to the church. In 1887 was sent as a missionary to the southern states for two years, returning in March 1889. But by 1887 his head was already buzzing with new and exciting ideas for firearm designs, and there is no doubt that his eagerness to continue inventing and developing weapons contrasted sharply with his religious duties and beliefs. But he did his duty and went as a missionary, though after his return it is perhaps significant that he never again took an active role in church activities, limiting his participation to occasionally accompanying his wife Rachel to services. Almost certainly he regarded those two years as a complete waste of his time.

  Upon his return, John Browning threw himself into his work with renewed vigour. An indication of his enthusiasm is that twenty patents were granted to him in just over three years. His method of working was rather unusual. By then he did not use blueprints, or even produce drawings, of the designs he was developing. Instead he would ‘assemble’ the mechanism in his head, and only start making templates or parts when he was certain that it would work smoothly and correctly.

  Once a model had been constructed, he would take it into the hills around Ogden and test-fire dozens of rounds, noting critically the way the weapon behaved. Then he would sit at home after supper, loading the piece and working the action, noting any roughness or irregularity. The next morning Ed would find John in the shop, the gun stripped on the bench in front of him, while he filed, fingered or just considered a part. With any minor modifications made, the test-firing would begin again, and the process continued until he was sure the gun was right in every respect.

  And then there were the trips out east to Winchester at New Haven, where John would show the gun or guns he had produced. And, invariably, T G Bennett would buy the weapons, usually with little haggling over the price, though John quite often accepted Winchester goods in part-payment. These the Browning brothers sold through their new and very much larger two-storey shop in Main Street, Ogden, where the business was booming.

  The reliance placed upon John Browning by Bennett and the Winchester Company is exemplified by the fact that for almost twenty years no new gun introduced by Winchester was designed by anyone other than Browning. In fact, Bennett bought a total of forty four Browning guns over a period of seventeen years — a larger number of weapons than were patented by all the other inventors working in America in the same period — though only ten of these guns actually reached the production line.

  It may seem poor business practice to buy goods which are never intended to be sold, but actually Bennett was ensuring the success of Winchester. By giving John Browning the asking price for any gun he produced, he was effectively giving Winchester a monopoly of Browning’s genius. He was well aware that if he refused to accept a gun, Browning could simply take it to Colt or one of the other major manufacturers, where he would be welcomed with open arms, and Winchester would then face a competitor producing a weapon of a similar quality to its own. As far as Bennett was concerned, the cost of thirty four patents was simply the equivalent of a payment on an insurance policy.

  It must be emphasized that all these designs were entirely different. John Browning did not take out separate patents for only minor alterations, and frequently included notes within each patent application confirming that a particular mechanism could be adapted to a different weapon — a shotgun when the patent was for a rifle, and so on. And when each new patent was granted, the task of other firearms inventors in America became that much more difficult.

  Bennett had finally agreed with John about the potential for a pump-action shotgun, and the weapon was duly introduced as the Model 93 (later known as the Model 97), and remained in production until 1957. This weapon was extensively used during the First World War, as so-called ‘trench guns’, and issued to those American troops who were demonstrably skilled in trap and skeet shooting. These men used the shotgun to destroy enemy hand grenades in flight, and in one celebrated incident a small force of some 200 US soldiers used devastating massed fire from their Model 97 shotguns at extremely close range to defeat a major assault by German troops.

  Another pump-action weapon, the Model 90 .22 rifle, caused a certain amount of embarrassment at the Winchester factory. When Bennett had asked for the gun to be designed, John had been very busy and, breaking with his usual routine of providing a working model, he had sent only a set of detailed drawings.

  After a short while, John received a letter from an official of the Winchester Company which recommended that he cease work on the weapon, as an assessment
of the drawings by Winchester engineers had shown that the rifle would not function. John read the letter, made a working model of the gun as quickly as he could and sent it straight to Winchester with a terse note stating that, as far as he could see, it worked well enough. The Model 90, and its two later successors the Models 06 and 62, went on to become arguably the most popular .22 pump-action rifles ever produced, selling well over two million units and remaining in production until 1958.

  In 1890 another request was made to John Browning by Bennett when the inventor was visiting New Haven with Matt, this time for a rifle similar to the highly acclaimed Model 86, but slightly scaled down to handle the .44/40 round and to replace the ageing Winchester 73. Bennett was clearly in a hurry, and he offered John ten thousand dollars if he could deliver a working model in three months, and fifteen thousand if he could manage it in two months. John thought for a few moments and consulted a calendar. He calculated that it would take him about six days to get back to Ogden and a further six days for the rifle to be sent from Ogden to New Haven. Then he turned to Bennett and told him that he would either have the new rifle in Bennett’s hands within thirty days — but for the sum of twenty thousand dollars — or he would give the gun to him.

  Both Bennett and Matt, who was at the interview, were astounded. Bennett quickly recovered and included John’s proposal in his offer, but excluded John’s offer to give him the gun and this was accepted. John spent the journey back to Ogden mentally designing the new rifle. He started work on the receiver the day of his arrival home, began assembly within a week, and had the weapon firing in two weeks. Bennett received it in well under the thirty day period agreed, and sent the cheque for twenty thousand dollars immediately.