![\"EM\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/07\/em.png?w=620\")
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By late 1947 the British Army\u2019s Armaments Design Department had designed three principal rifles for the Infantry Personal Weapon program. The new rifles got their official designations in January 1948.<\/p>\n
They were Stanley Thorpe\u2019s EM-1<\/a>, the EM-2<\/a> designed by Capt. Kazimierz Stefan Januszewski and the EM-3, the latter the brainchild of Major J.E.M. Hall, an Australian.<\/p>\n The three designs shared one common design feature\u200a\u2014\u200athey all featured the bullpup configuration, with the action behind the trigger. This layout produced a compact weapon ideally suited to close-quarters combat.<\/p>\n Hall began developing his rifle in 1944 as a response to problems he encountered during a small-arms course at the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham. He patented his bullpup design in February 1945.<\/p>\n Hall\u2019s rifle was semi-automatic only and used an interesting vertically-sliding block to lock the rifle\u2019s breech. He meant the weapon to fire a rimless\u00a0.303-caliber round\u200a\u2014\u200aalthough, in practice, the rifle was compatible with a range of cartridges. Hall\u2019s EM-3 bullpup fed from a 10-round, detachable box magazine similar in dimensions to that of the Lee-Enfield\u2019s.<\/p>\n