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EARLY HISTORY Predecessors The ancestor of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company was the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, which manufactured the Volcanic lever action rifle of Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson. It was later reorganized into the New Haven Arms Company, its largest stockholder being Oliver Winchester. The Volcanic rifle used a form of "caseless" ammunition and had only limited success. Wesson had also designed an early form of rimfire cartridge which was subsequently perfected by Benjamin Tyler Henry . Henry also supervised the redesign of the rifle to use the new ammunition, retaining only the general form of the breech mechanism and the tubular magazine. This became the Henry Rifle of 1860, which was manufactured by the New Haven Arms Company and was used in considerable numbers by certain Union army units in the civil war. The "Winchester" Rifle After the war Oliver Winchester continued to exercise control of the company, renaming it the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and had the basic design of the Henry Rifle completely modified and improved to become the first Winchester rifle, the Model 1866, which fired centerfire cartridges and had an improved magazine and, for the first time, a wooden forearm. Another popular model was rolled out in 1873. These rifle families are both commonly known as the "Gun That Won the West". From 1883, John Browning worked in partnership with the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and designed a series of repeating rifles and shotguns, most notably the Winchester Model 1887 , Model 1897 , and Model 1912 shotguns; and the lever-action Model 1886, Model 1892, Model 1894 and Model 1895 rifles, all of which are still in production today. 20TH CENTURY DEVELOPMENTS The Turn of the Century The early years of the twentieth century found the Winchester Repeating Arms Company competing with new John Browning designs, manufactured under license by other firearm companies. The race to produce the first commerical self-loading rifle brought forth the .22 rimfire Winchester Model 1903 and later centerfire Model 1905, Model 1907, and Model 1910 rifles. Winchester engineers, after ten years of work, designed the Model 1911 to circumvent Browning's self-loading shotgun patents, filed by the company's very own patent lawyers. One of Winchester's premier engineers, T.C. Johnson, was instrumental in the development of these self-loading firearms and indeed went on to assist with the design of the Winchester Model 12 and Model 54. The World Wars The company later bought and manufactured several of John Browning 's highly superior rifle and shotgun designs and was a major producer of M1917 Enfield military rifles during World War I. Working at the Winchester plant during that war, Browning developed the final design of the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), of which it produced some 27,000. Browning and the Winchester engineers also developed the Browning .50 BMG caliber (12.7 x 99 mm) machine gun during the war. The caliber .50 (12.7 x 99 mm) ammunition for it was designed by the Winchester ballistic engineers. The commercial rights to these new Browning guns were owned by Colt. In 1931 the Winchester firm was purchased by the Olin Corporation and continued its production of civilian rifles and shotguns. The U.S. M1 carbine (although not a carbine in the truest sense) was designed by Winchester engineers Clifford Warner and Ralph Clarkson (contrary to a widely published myth, not by D.M. Williams) and was then manufactured in large numbers by Winchester and other firms. During World War II Winchester was the sole civilian producer of the M1 rifle and later was the first civilian manufacturer of the M14 rifle. The Cold War and Beyond In the mid 1950's S. K. Janson formed a new Winchester design group to advance the use of modern engineering design methods and manufacturing principles in gun design. The result was a new line of guns which replaced most of the older products. Olin later sold off Winchester's firearms manufacturing business in 1981, retaining only the Winchester branded ammunition business. From 1981 until 2006, Winchester guns were made by the U.S. Repeating Arms Company. The End of an Era On January 16, 2006 U.S. Repeating Arms announced it was closing the New Haven, Conn. plant where Winchester rifles and shotguns were produced for 140 years. Along with the closing of the plant, the Model 94 (the descendant of the original Winchester Rifle ) along with many of Winchester's traditional rifles and shotguns such as the Winchester Model 70 would be discontinued. Excluding the model 70, the model 94, and the model 1300 - Winchester firearms will continue to be produced in manufacturing facilities located in Europe and Asia. SEE ALSO
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