John Moses Browning was a Genius.

NavyShooter

NavyShooter

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Well,

I spent a few minutes playing with a destroyed 1919A4....and have come to the conclusion that John Moses Browning was a Genius.

I knew it intellectually before, but looking at the multitude of concurrent functions which occur in a 1919, I'm now feeling it at a deeper level.

I love guns, I love taking them apart and understanding them. This one boggles my mind how he got it to all work together...and based it off a couple of sheets of steel for the receiver walls.

Genius.

Pure Genius.

This is a .50, but the operating principles are quite similar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb4GWulXVxg
 
Great being a Lynx Crew Commander in the 1980s: Three weapons by JMB: HMG Cal..50 M2HB TT, GPMG 7.62mm C5A1, 9mm Browning Pistol. all within five feet of each other!
 
Sorry, guys, but I just do not understand this almost-slavish adoration of the Works of Saint John Moses Browning.

Sure, he designed and built a gas-operated machine-gun. The Model 1895 was introduced 12 years after Maxim had filed the basic patents.

And he designed a water-cooled, recoil-operated machine-gun, the M-1917. This was 33 years after Maxim had filed the basic patents, 26 years after the British Army had adopted the superb 1891 Maxim. The frames on the 1917 broke in half in service, hence the reinforcing-strip rivetted to the middle of the frames.... and the ensuant redesign of the frame of the gun. Product improvement CAN help a designer at times. But Maxim frames didn't break, mainly because the design of the entire gun was based on controlled motion; there were no big, heavy parts slamming back and forth inside a Maxim.

The legendary, wonderful BAR is a replacement for the CSRG (Chauchat), a gun which has been termed "unquestionably the worst machine gun ever constructed". With this kind of competition, it's no wonder the thing looked good. The Poles and the Belgians did the most effectual mods on this gun. The Bren is a FAR better design.

The 1911 .45? I have one. It is the only firearm I own which RATTLES when it is shaken. Lugers don't rattle. Webleys don't rattle. The 1911/12 Steyr doesn't rattle. I wouldn't want to stand in front of it, but I sure wouldn't be too confident behind it, either. Mark VI Webley is a far better combat gun: it ALWAYS works.

Believe me, you will develop a different appreciation of the genius of John Moses Browning after you have been faced with 200 copies of his designs, all in one lump, all requiring complete disassembly, servicing, cleaning and repair, none of which has been touched in the past half-century, many of which have not been touched in a century! Too many parts, too many odd shapes. A lot of his designs can't even be built today because most machine-shops have scrapped their shapers and there don't seem to be any new ones being built on this continent.

The ubiquity of Browning's designs is down to a couple of factors:

1. They are American, and the WWI propaganda machine still hasn't stopped, the WW2 propaganda machine still is in high gear.

2. PRODUCTION: if you have 3/4 of a million .50-cal guns and a couple of million .30-cal guns already on hand, there's not really a heck of a lot of incentive to make new ones.

The proliferation of the designs can be partly accounted for by American political pressure in the Cold War. Remember, when Eisenhower forced John Diefenbaker to scrap and destroy utterly the Arrow (thus saving the US aerospace industry's butt for it), Canada was forced to purchase the Bomarc ("The World's Fastest Sandbag") ONE WEEK before the US announced its obsolescence..... and a pile of WW2-surplus Brownings which just now are being done away with finally. But even this politically-based proliferation can be accounted for in part by the sheer numbers produced.

We also have to look at the time period and the political climates in the various countries. Maxim was designing in a period in which a new invention was admired and greeted with interest. John Browning was designing in a period in which Americans were free to invent firearms. But times have changed. Place these developments in the Canada of today and you are looking at so many years in jail that you will NEVER see your pension cheque. Does the name Cliff Douglas ring a bell? It should: the last progressive Canadian automatic firearms designer.... nearly 50 years ago. At least he managed to stay out of jail, but he did no more designing.

Just trying to put things in some kind of perspective.

I guess I'm gonna be thrown outta the Church of Saint John Moses Browning, huh?
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And don't forget the JMB, Garand and the lot of them all did it with imagination, pen and paper, and hand tools mostly. They didn't have fancy CAD or computerized CNC machining. I'm sure a lot of trial and error went into the final designs but even still you have got to applaud someone who can envision something that complex and end with something so elegant.
 
Not trying to slag JMB, just put things into perspective.

His designs are heavy BECAUSE they have a lot of iron slamming back and forth.

But they are SIMPLE and they are PRODUCABLE, especially if you have the industrial infrastructure. Lots of effort has been expended trying to "update" JMB's designs. These efforts fail because modern designers try to get "cute" and do not appreciate the fact that SIMPLICITY is a virtue all of its own. I'm thinking now of a couple of short-frame tank MGs which proved complete busts in actual service. They didn't work anything like as well as the "obsolete" old Brownings they were supposed to replace.

Something might be old, but if it DOES THE JOB, and does the job better than its modern "replacement", then it isn't obsolete except by procurement committee standards.

"A committee is a life-form with many legs and no brain." (Robert A. Heinlein)
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What amaze's me is that all pre 1900 every firearm made was made on a manual machine with an operator running it.And with cutter's and tooling made from carbon steel.
One at a time,one operation at a time.
And they actually worked! and the part's interchanged!
 
smellie said:
Sorry, guys, but I just do not understand this almost-slavish adoration of the Works of Saint John Moses Browning

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Just trying to put things in some kind of perspective.

I guess I'm gonna be thrown outta the Church of Saint John Moses Browning, huh?
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I really don't mean to offend you :redface: , but....I'm not even sure where to begin !....:eek:

The ACP family of cartridges, the .50 BMG and the Browning M-2 machine gun, the Browning "superposed" over-under shotgun, the Colt Woodsman .22, the 1886 lever-action rifle, the 1887 lever-action shotgun, the 1893/1897 (Winchester) shotgun, the Browning Auto-5 shotgun, the Remington Model 17 (which evolved into the Ithaca 37), and (even if you somehow dislike the 1911 :yingyang: ) the Browning Hi-Power are just a few of the tremendously innovative, robust and popular designs of John Moses Browning !......:wave:

Even one of the above designs/accomplishments would have been amazing - but all of them ?

"Genius" is indeed an appropriate term for him, IMHO.
 
Browning was certainly a prolific designer. His guns worked and were produced in the millions. Having used or owned all of the following Browning designs, I couldn't offer much criticism of them; Colt M1911, Win Model 1886, Win Model 1892, Win Model 1894, Win Model 1895, Win Model 1897, Browning HP pistol, Browning .50cal M2, and Browning M1919. His lever guns are quite elegant in addition to their soundness of design. I've also owned a BAR. It is really an automatic rifle, not a light machine gun. It came a generation before the BREN, so really can't be compared to it.
 
cyclone said:
I really don't mean to offend you :redface: , but....I'm not even sure where to begin !....:eek:

The ACP family of cartridges, the .50 BMG and the Browning M-2 machine gun, the Browning "superposed" over-under shotgun, the Colt Woodsman .22, the 1886 lever-action rifle, the 1887 lever-action shotgun, the 1893/1897 (Winchester) shotgun, the Browning Auto-5 shotgun, the Remington Model 17 (which evolved into the Ithaca 37), and (even if you somehow dislike the 1911 :yingyang: ) the Browning Hi-Power are just a few of the tremendously innovative, robust and popular designs of John Moses Browning !......:wave:

Even one of the above designs/accomplishments would have been amazing - but all of them ?

"Genius" is indeed an appropriate term for him, IMHO.
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Well said:) Can you just imagine if he was alive today what he would be designing in firearms .
 
cyclone said:
the Browning "superposed" over-under shotgun,
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Nothing special about the Superposed. An already established design and concept (Boss, Anson Deeley, Southgate, Greener), a forend mechanism that was made needlessly more complex than other designs that were in use at the time (Deeley). The Superposed was the Norinco of its day. A production gun that could be made more cheaply than hand-made guns more common at the time.

An honest student of firearms history who looks past the American chest thumpring bulls**t quickly concludes that with the possible exception of the tilt-barrel locking system much of Browning's work was incremental advancements on already established concepts. It's always worth remembering that JMB was still making single-shot rifles at Winchester when Hiram Maxim was presenting his belt fed machine gun to the British Army Board.
 
Claybuster said:
Nothing special about the Superposed. An already established design and concept (Boss, Anson Deeley, Southgate, Greener), a forend mechanism that was made needlessly more complex than other designs that were in use at the time (Deeley). The Superposed was the Norinco of its day. A production gun that could be made more cheaply than hand-made guns more common at the time.

An honest student of firearms history who looks past the American chest thumpring bulls**t quickly concludes that with the possible exception of the tilt-barrel locking system much of Browning's work was incremental advancements on already established concepts. It's always worth remembering that JMB was still making single-shot rifles at Winchester when Hiram Maxim was presenting his belt fed machine gun to the British Army Board.
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There were of course designs that JMB wasn't "first" to :yingyang: , but there's little question he improved/made more popular many designs.

Spencer was first to the slide-action shotgun, for example, but most think of the 1897 before they think of the Spencer pump-action....:wave:...Similarly, the 1886 was not the first lever-action rifle: but it was definitely of the first to chamber more powerful loads.

It is a real shame we Canadians do not often think of (or shoot) the .25 ACP and .32 ACP, or even the .380 ACP :( - a whole slew of "pocket pistols" for self-defence were made possible by those marvellous cartridges.

The .38 ACP may be familiar to those who like the .38 Super, but that .45 ACP is a magnificent cartridge by all accounts.....:cool:

And Maxim never conceived of the M-2 Browning or the .50 BMG....:D
 
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