John Moses Browning: From an Ogden Workbench to the M2 Machine Gun

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John Moses Browning built his first gun from scrap at 13 in his father Jonathan's shop in Ogden, Utah, where he had worked since age seven. Jonathan was a Mormon pioneer with 22 children who opened the shop in 1852. In 1878 John and his brother Matthew founded their own company, and John patented a single-shot falling-block rifle whose steel block sealed the breech like a vault door. Winchester sent a representative west and bought the design for $8,000. For roughly 15 years Browning sold Winchester designs for flat fees, including the Model 1886, 1892, and 1894, which sold more than six million units. By 1898 he had a long recoil semi-automatic shotgun, the future Auto-5, and asked for royalties instead.

Winchester refused, and Browning walked out. At Remington the company president died of a heart attack while Browning waited to pitch him, so he took the shotgun to Fabrique Nationale in Belgium, which agreed to royalties. He then wrapped a hollow slide around the pistol barrel, shortening handguns and leading to the Colt M1911, the U.S. military sidearm until 1986. He designed cartridges including the .32 ACP, .380 ACP, and .45 ACP, a gas-operated 1895 machine gun, the M1917, the Browning Automatic Rifle, a 37mm autocannon, and the .50 caliber M2, adopted in 1921 and still in service. He died in 1926 at the FN factory in Liège with 128 patents.

• His falling-block action used a vertically sliding steel block worked by a lever to load and seal the chamber.
• The long recoil system let the barrel and bolt travel back together, compressing a spring that cycled the next shell.
• His gas system tapped a small hole in the barrel to drive a piston that worked the bolt.
• The water-cooled M1917 could fire for hours without the barrel melting.
• His final design, the Superposed over-under shotgun, was finished by his son Val Browning.