When did John M Browning invent the machine gun?

Answer 1

John M. Browning's invention of the machine gun began with a seemingly commonplace event that occured in the fall of 1889 when he, his brothers and some friends were at a weekly shoot at the Odgen Gun Club. While a friend, Will Wright, was shooting, Browning happened to notice that the weeds, 10 feet in front of Wright and to his left, were blown forward each time he fired. At that moment, Browning realized that the gases emitted from the barrel could be harnessed to fire a gun automatically.

John and his brothers quickly went back to the shop where John demonstrated with an old lever-action Winchester 73 rifle that a block could be propelled across the shop just by the gases coming from the barrel. The next day, Browning took that same rifle and with the help of his brothers, Matt and Ed, modified it with a "flapper," which allowed the bullet to pass through but harnessed the gases to move a lever arm that was connected to push rod going back to the modified trigger and lever arm. When the gun was fired, the flapper activated the lever arm, moving the push rod, which cocked the gun and pulled the trigger. The cycle was rapidly repeated, emptying the gun in seconds.

However, that was not enough for John Browning. He made several more prototypes before patenting the gas-operating principle on January 6, 1890. Some 18 months later, Browning filed two more patents on August 3, 1891, covering two completely different automatic guns. The first patent, used a small turbine, to harness the gas at the end of the barrel. The other patent covered the entire mechanism of his first machine gun. Then, on July 11, 1892, Browning filed another new patent, this time covering a third principle that employed a hole drilled in the barrel, to use the gases behind the bullet before the gun left the barrel. On November 7, 1892, Browning filed another patent to cover his second machine gun. It used a hole drilled near the muzzle to power a piston that actuated the gun's mechanism. Browning fired four more patent applications between March 1893 and July 1895. He also filed another patent in December 1894 covering the development of gas ports in machine guns.

Development of the machine gun was easier than finding a market for it. Eventually, Colt produced Browning's first machine gun as the Colt Model 1895 Automatic Machine Gun. Browning patented his .30 caliber machine gun in July 1901 and the Browning Automatic Rifle in 1910, but it wouldn't be until 1916 that the U.S. Government took an interest in them as part of the run up to World War I that they were actually mass produced. However, the War Department decided it also needed a .50 cal machine gun. However, instead of consulting Browning, they attempted to rechamber the .30 cal machine gun and, in the process, they lost valuable time because it didn't work. They went to Browning, who came to the conclusion right away that a different system was needed for a .50 caliber. This gun used a recoil mechanism and an oil buffer that handled the increased caliber. Browning finished the gun relatively quickly, but it didn' clear the government test at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland until November 15, 1918--four days after World War I ended.

Browning also upscaled his automatic machine gun designs, at the request of the U.S. Government. He made several aircraft cannon in a variety of sizes. including 27 mm and 37 mm. However, after the First World War, the U.S. Government was no longer interested in machine gun development. John Browning died in 1926, but his machine guns would be produced in huge quantities for World War II. Every machine gun mounted on U.S. tanks, planes and ships were Brownings. Ten to each plane were also mounted on Royal Air Force Spitfires and Hurricanes. German Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering said in a secret memo uncovered after the war that if the Luftwaffe had the Browning machine gun that the Battle of Britain would have turned out differently. Russian planes equipped with Browning 20 mm machine guns also devastated the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front. The Browning .50 caliber is still in use by the U.S. military to this day.

Note that while the above is interesting and informative, John Browning did not actually invent the machine gun.

The gas-operated blowback mechanism that is the foundation of all machineguns was invented by Hiram Maxim in 1884. Practically all early machineguns except for Browning's were derived from Maxim's design - Browning's design uses a different mechanism, though the principle is the same. Virtually all machineguns used up through the WW1 were either direct copies of the Maxim design, or derivatives made from it. Browning's design was not popular with militaries until the US Army re-evaluated it in 1917 (when it needed new machineguns to go with sending troops to France).