M1900/Browning No.1 | |
---|---|
Type | Semi-automatic pistol |
Place of origin |
|
Production history | |
Designer | John Browning [1] |
Designed | 1896 |
Produced | 1898-1909 |
No. built | c. 700,000 [1] |
Variants | Modele 1899, Mle. 1900 |
Specifications | |
Mass | 625 g (1.378 lb) [1] |
Length | 17.2 cm (6.8 in) [1] |
Barrel length | 10.2 cm (4.0 in) [1] |
Cartridge | .32 ACP (7.65×17mm Browning SR) [1] |
Action | Blowback operated |
Feed system | 7+1 [1] |
Sights | Fixed |
The FN Browning M1900 is a single action semi-automatic pistol designed c. 1896 by John Browning for Fabrique Nationale de Herstal (FN) and produced in Belgium at the turn of the 20th century. It was the first production handgun to use a slide.
The design was presented to arms manufacturer FN Herstal in 1897, with production commencing the following year (then under the designation Modele 1899). In 1900, an improved design featuring primarily a shorter barrel and wider grips was introduced as the M1900. These designations were applied retroactively after FN began manufacture of other Browning pistol designs; initially the M1900 was marketed as simply the "Pistolet Browning" (Browning Pistol). Production ceased only 11 years later, with a total of about 700,000+ units having been produced.
United States President Theodore Roosevelt owned a mother of pearl-gripped Modele 1899, which he regularly kept on his person and in his bedside drawer. It now resides in the NRA Firearms Museum. [2]
Eugen Schauman, a Finnish nationalist activist, assassinated the Governor-General Nikolay Bobrikov (the highest Russian authority in the Grand Duchy of Finland) with a Browning pistol in Helsinki on June 16, 1904. The act was followed by spontaneous anti-Russian celebrations in the streets of Helsinki and after the 1917 independence Schauman was considered to be a national hero of Finland. [3]
An Jung-geun, a Korean-independence activist, assassinated the 1st Prime Minister of Japan and Resident-General of Korea Itō Hirobumi with this type of gun on October 26, 1909 in Harbin railway station. [4] [5]
Socialist revolutionary Fanny Kaplan also used a FN M1900 in her attempted assassination of Lenin on August 30, 1918. [6]
Abelardo Mendoza Leyva, a militant of the Peruvian left-wing APRA party, is also reported to have used an FN1900 to assassinate President Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro in Lima, on April 30, 1933. [7]
The pistol was popular in China from its introduction through World War II and was often copied and used as the basis for other designs. [8] State-run arsenals produced serialized production runs for warlord militias, and local craftsmen produced one-off handmade versions. [9]
The North Korean Type 64 pistol is a copy of the M1900. Specimens examined by western authorities were marked with the date of 1964. A silenced variant was produced that featured a shortened slide to allow the threaded barrel to protrude far enough to attach the silencer. [10]
The weapon is chambered for .32 ACP, also known as 7.65×17mm Browning SR ("SR" denotes semi-rimmed).
This model is known by several names, including:
The Pistole Parabellum or Parabellum-Pistole, commonly known as just the Luger or Luger P08, is a toggle-locked recoil-operated semi-automatic pistol. The Luger was produced in several models and by several nations from 1898 to 1949.
The Browning Hi-Power is a single-action, semi-automatic pistol available in the 9×19mm Parabellum and .40 S&W calibers. It was based on a design by American firearms inventor John Browning, and completed by Dieudonné Saive at FN Herstal. Browning died in 1926, several years before the design was finalized. FN Herstal named it the "High Power" in allusion to the 13-round magazine capacity, almost twice that of other designs at the time, such as the Walther P38 or Colt M1911.
John Moses Browning was an American firearm designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun mechanisms, many of which are still in use around the world. He made his first firearm at age 13 in his father's gun shop and was awarded the first of his 128 firearm patents on October 7, 1879, at the age of 24. He is regarded as one of the most successful firearms designers of the 19th and 20th centuries and a pioneer of modern repeating, semi-automatic, and automatic firearms.
The Colt M1911 is a single-action, recoil-operated, semi-automatic pistol chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge. The pistol's formal U.S. military designation as of 1940 was Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911 for the original model adopted in March 1911, and Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911A1 for the improved M1911A1 model which entered service in 1926. The designation changed to Pistol, Caliber .45, Automatic, M1911A1 in the Vietnam War era.
The Mauser C96 is a semi-automatic pistol that was originally produced by German arms manufacturer Mauser from 1896 to 1937. Unlicensed copies of the gun were also manufactured in Spain and China in the first half of the 20th century.
A semi-automatic pistol is a handgun that automatically ejects and loads cartridges in its chamber after every shot fired. Only one round of ammunition is fired each time the trigger is pulled, as the pistol's fire control group disconnects the trigger mechanism from the firing pin/striker until the trigger has been released and reset.
.32 ACP is a centerfire pistol cartridge. It is a semi-rimmed, straight-walled cartridge developed by firearms designer John Browning, initially for use in the FN M1900 semi-automatic pistol. It was introduced in 1899 by Fabrique Nationale, and is also known as the 7.65 mm Browning Short.
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The Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless is a .32 ACP caliber, self-loading, semi-automatic pistol designed by John Browning and built by Colt Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut. The Colt Model 1908 Pocket Hammerless is a variant introduced five years later in .380 ACP caliber. Despite the title "hammerless", the Model 1903 does have a hammer. The hammer is covered and hidden from view under the rear of the slide, this allows the pistol to be carried in and withdrawn from a pocket quickly and smoothly without snagging.
The Colt Model 1900 is a short-recoil operated "self-loading", or semi-automatic .38 caliber handgun introduced by Colt's Manufacturing Company at the turn of the 20th century. The M1900 was the first firearm to be chambered in .38 ACP and was the first handgun to utilize short-recoil operation.
The FN Model 1903, or Browning No.2 is a semi-automatic pistol designed by John Browning and manufactured by Belgian arms manufacturer Fabrique Nationale (FN). It was introduced in 1903 and fired the 9×20mmSR Browning Long cartridge. It should not be confused with the US-made Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless, nor with the Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammer. The FN Model 1903 is based on the same mechanical design as the Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless, which Browning sold to both companies, but enlarged to handle the more powerful 9mm Browning Long cartridge. The M1903's reliability, accuracy, light weight, and quick reloading made it a popular service pistol for many police forces and militaries. The pistol was initially introduced by FN as the Browning Modèle de Guerre or Browning Grand Modèle.
The Rubypistol was a semi-automatic pistol of .32 ACP calibre made by Gabilondo y Urresti and other Spanish companies. It saw use in both World Wars as the service weapon of the French Army under the name Pistolet Automatique de 7 millim.65 genre "Ruby".
The Beholla pistol was developed by Becker & Hollander. During World War I, it was a secondary military pistol used by the Imperial German Army. It was manufactured from 1915 until 1918, where, at that point, about 45,000 were produced.
The 1931 Fabrique Nationale (FN) Baby Browning is a small blowback-operated semi-automatic pistol designed by Belgium-born Dieudonné Saive chambered in .25 ACP. The pistol features a six-round magazine capacity and is a striker-fired, single action, blow back mechanism. The manual thumb operated safety locks the slide in the closed position when engaged using side thumb pressure.
The FN 5.7×28mm is a small-caliber, high-velocity, smokeless-powder, rebated, bottleneck, centerfire cartridge designed for pistols and personal defense weapons (PDW) uses, manufactured by FN Herstal. It is similar in length to the .22 WMR and .22 Hornet. Unlike many new cartridges, it has no parent case; the complete package was developed from scratch by FN.
The 7.65×21mm Parabellum is a pistol cartridge that was introduced in 1898 by German arms manufacturer Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) for their new Pistol Parabellum. The primary developers of the pistol cartridge were firearms designers Georg Luger and Hugo Borchardt, who developed the round from the earlier 7.65×25mm Borchardt while working at DWM.
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In firearms, the mainspring is a spring in the firing mechanism which stores the energy required to ignite the primer of the cartridge. The mainspring may be called a striker spring on striker-fired firearms, or hammer spring on hammer-fired firearms. After the trigger mechanism has been released, the tensioned mainspring will drive the firing pin or hit the firing pin so that it is driven.
A mainstream Soviet movie from the 1940s, once famous in China, called Lenin in 1918 shows Lenin's bodyguard Wassily using an FN 1900. Also interestingly, in the same movie, the female agent from the Kerensky government named Fanny Kaplan tried to kill Lenin using the same pistol