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This year marks the 100th anniverary of John Moses Browning's design of Colt's Automatic Pistol Caliber .45 Modle of 1911. In that year, on Feburary 14, Colt received the Patent for the design in John Brownings name.
Later that year, March 15, the US Army conducted a head to head test between the Colt 1911, and another entry from Savage, where both pistols were to fire 6000 rounds, fired in 100 round strings, then allowed to cool for 5 minutes, with only basic cleaning after each 1000 rounds. The 1911 had 0 malfunctions. The entry from Savage experienced 37. The choice was obvious. During this test, it is said that one of the soldiers testing the 1911 fired 1000 rounds in just 38 minutes. To put this into perspective, 6000 230 grain bullets equates to about 197 pounds of lead sent down range from each pistol. At 7 rounds per magazine, that works out to 857 magazines, plus a couple of extra rounds.
The 1911, and shortly there after the improved 1911A1 has been in the inventory of our armed services for 100 years. Now from an engineering standpoint, that really says something about John M Browning as an engineer. I am a Designer, (a drafter who also does some light engineering), and I can tell you that anyone in the engineering field would consider themselves fortunate to design something that works well. We'd consider ourselves Damn good to design something that last over the span of our careers, but to design some thing that out lives generations of our bloodline is just unheard of.
I just resently read an article in the January 2011 issue of Gun World Magazine, written by Lee Boyt where I picked up most of the info I entered above. Read the article yourself, it's well worth the cover price.
_________________ Slow is Fast, Fast is Slow
Violence may not be the best option, but it IS an option
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