By the last decades of the 19th century, the revolver had been perfected to become an efficient and reliable pistol with a design that remains essentially the same today. Previous designs for revolvers had suffered from two major drawbacks; one, they were relatively slow to load and reload, and two, they only had a limited capacity, which was normally five or six shots. Consequently, firearms designers began to explore other possibilities for repeating pistols.
Rather than mechanical rotation aligning another cartridge to a firing position, designers started to think outside of the box and utilise the inertia of a firearm’s recoil to reload it automatically. In 1893, veteran designer Hugo Borchardt perfected a pistol that harnessed the recoil of every shot, channelling it through a folding toggle joint to load a successive cartridge.
Best of all, the pistol’s ammunition was contained in a small box magazine, making it quick to reload. Borchardt’s pistol was commercially available from 1894, but it was an ungainly thing that was best fired as a carbine using a detachable stock.
Immediate success
This story is from the June 07, 2023 edition of Shooting Times & Country.
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This story is from the June 07, 2023 edition of Shooting Times & Country.
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