![\"1898\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/05\/1898.jpg?w=620\")
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A Pistol So Far Ahead of it’s Time Most Customers Rejected It<\/strong><\/p>\n Schwarzlose is a name that most will associate with the M1907 <\/em>medium machine gun that the Austro-Hungarian army used in World War I.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s another Schwarzlose gun. In 1898, Andreas Wilhelm Schwarzlose completed a truly advanced pistol design that was well ahead of its contemporaries in design and ergonomics.<\/p>\n Schwarzlose was Prussian. As a young man he served as a gunner and armorer in the Austro-Hungarian army before training at the National Ordnance College and setting up his own company, A.W. Schwarzlose G.m.b.H., in Berlin in 1897.<\/p>\n Schwarzlose filed his first patent for the design in Britain in 1898 and got his U.S. patent in 1902 as production in Berlin was just beginning. The design evolved between the two patents, with the first showing a small bolt handle on the left-hand side of the bolt\u200a\u2014\u200aa feature Schwarzlose later replaced with a T-bar charging-handle.<\/p>\n Additionally, the early patent describes an accelerator which, in theory, would have ensured that the action cycled. However, the 7.63-by-25-millimeter Mauser ammunition that the pistol used proved to be more than powerful enough to cycle without<\/em> an accelerator\u200a\u2014\u200aand Schwarzlose removed this design element by the time of the second patent in January 1898.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n