John Moses Browning was a highly successful gunsmith
from Utah. Inspired by the work of Hiram
Maxim Browning began work on an automatic machine-gun. Unlike Maxim
used propelling gas as a motive force. He drilled a hole in the gun
barrel to divert some of the gas behind the bullet into a cylinder to
drive a piston, which performed the various tasks of extracting the
cartridge case, reloading and firing. In 1895 the Browning machine-gun
was purchased by the US Navy.
In 1910 Browning produced a new
0.30-inch machine gun. However, the gun was not ordered by the United States
Army until 1917. Over the next eighteen months 57,000 of these guns
were produced for soldiers fighting on the Western
Front.
John Moses Browning with his
machine-gun
(1)
William Browning wrote an account of the first time he demonstrated his
new machine-gun to the US military.
On reaching the firing range I quit wishing that Charlie and
I had changed our shirts that morning, and before anyone had time to say
much, we had the gun on the mount, banging away into one of the firing
tunnels. I ran the two hundred rounds through so fast nobody could
think. When the last empty shell spanged on the floor, with not a hitch
in two hundred, Hall and his men were bug-eyed. The changed expression
of Hall and his men put a pound of fat on my ribs.
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