1.

Calvin Goddard

Contributions Calvin Hooker Goddard went on to become the “Father of Modern Ballistics” for
developing the system by which bullets can be traced to the weapons that fired them. Calvin
Hooker Goddard went on to become the “Father of Ballistics” for developing the system by
which bullets can be traced to the weapons that fired them. He also helped develop the first lie
detectors. He also helped develop the first lie detectors. He founded the science of Firearms
Identification, which helped police solve the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929 He founded
the science of Firearms Identification, which helped police solve the St. Valentine’s Day
Massacre in 1929

 History Calvin was born in Baltimore in 1891. Calvin was born in Baltimore in 1891. Calvin
graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 1911 and earned his medical degree in 1915
from the same university. Calvin graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 1911 and
earned his medical degree in 1915 from the same university.

2. Alexander John Forsyth (28 December 1769 – 11 June 1843) was a Scottish Presbyterian
clergyman who first successfully used fulminating (or 'detonating') chemicals to prime gunpowder in
fire-arms thereby creating what became known as percussion ignition.

Forsyth took out a British patent for locks utilising fulminates in 1807. Despite being in force, several
British gunsmiths, most notably Joseph Manton, invented other forms of detonating gunlock’s ignition in
order to evade Forsyth's patent, which would not expire until 1821. Forsyth continually protected his
patent between 1807 and 1821 in Britain with legal action. He fought cases against Joseph Egg, Collinson
Hall, Isaac Riviere, Joseph Vicars, and Joseph Manton (twice). The most notorious of these attempted
patent evasions was Manton's 'pellet lock' patented 29 Feb 1816, which importantly worked with a
hollow nipple - a feature invented by Hall which became mainstream later. Manton's pellet lock patent
was decided in court to be an infringement of Forsyth's patent. The pellet lock had not been a great
success, but Manton's tube lock was a much better device. Manton patented it on 3 August 1818, which
Forsyth also challenged successfully. However, despite conceding legal defeat, Manton continued to
produce them and finally negotiated licensing terms which led to Forsyth's company deciding to license
the use of locks using fulminates to a number of other gunmakers from the Autumn of 1819, 18 months
before the expiry of the patent.

A number of other British gunmakers and sportsmen also attempted to evade Forsyth's patent by
avoiding complicated gunlocks likes Forsyth's. They hit on the idea of a simple percussion cap aka
'copper cap', a small cup with fulminating paste inside, which, when was placed over a hollow nipple and
struck with a hammer, would ignite the gunpowder in the end of the breech. These men included Joseph
Egg, James Purdey, Col. Peter Hawker and the British born artist Joshua Shaw. In the face of so much
competition, Shaw decided to travel to America in 1817 and, once he was legally allowed to do so, was
granted an American patent for a percussion cap in 1822. Shaw made a series of claims of being the
inventor in order to gain compensation from the U.S. government for their use of copper caps without
permission. This has led some vintage gun enthusiasts to claim Shaw was the inventor of the copper cap.
Many gun historians have concluded that the inventor will probably never be known for certain.
 The first patent for a copper cap ignition system anywhere in the world was granted to Prelat in 1818 in
France. Prelat was probably not the inventor as he often took out French patents for British ideas.
[citation needed] More recently, Joseph Egg's claims are given more credence, and he is now considered
the first to have put copper cap ignition into commercial production and to have 'laid the earliest claim
to the invention'.[5] In his advertising, Egg consistently claimed to have invented it and took pride in his
decision not to take out a patent so it could be used by all.

These new forms of ignition proved popular among sportsmen’s during the Regency period, who had
their old unreliable flintlocks converted.

3. Horace Smith (October 28, 1808 – January 15, 1893) was an American gunsmith, inventor, and
businessman. He and his business partner Daniel B. Wesson formed two companies named "Smith &
Wesson", the first of which was eventually reorganized into the Winchester Repeating Arms Company
and the latter of which became the modern Smith & Wesson.

Early career
Born in Cheshire, Massachusetts, Smith was employed by the U. S. Armory service from 1824 to 1842,
when he moved to Newtown, Connecticut. He was employed by various gun makers up to the 1840s,
when he moved to Norwich, Connecticut. He is then listed as a partner of Cranston & Smith. It is known
that while in Norwich, he engaged in the manufacture of whaling guns and he is credited with the
invention of the explosive bullet used to kill whales.

Volcanic Repeating Arms

Smith and Daniel B. Wesson formed a partnership in 1852 for the purpose of developing the magazine
arms later to be manufactured under the Smith & Wesson name. They founded the Smith & Wesson
Company, with Cortlandt Palmer, in Norwich, Connecticut in 1854 to develop magazine firearms and the
Volcanic rifle, the first repeating rifle. Smith developed a new Volcanic Cartridge, which he patented in
1854. The Smith & Wesson Company was renamed Volcanic Repeating Arms in 1855, and was financed
largely by Oliver Winchester.

In 1856, the partners left Volcanic Repeating Arms to begin a new company and to manufacture a newly
designed revolver-and-cartridge combination. Volcanic Repeating Arms was reorganized as the New
Haven Arms Company and eventually as the Winchester Repeating Arms Company

Smith & Wesson

In 1857, Smith and Wesson formed another Smith & Wesson company, this time to produce a pistol
with interchangeable parts, a repeating action, a revolving magazine, metallic cartridges, and an open
cylinder. They developed more firearms using their own patents along with patents and licenses bought
from other gunsmiths.

Smith sold his interest in the company to Wesson in 1874 at the age of 65 and retired.

4. Daniel Baird Wesson (May 18, 1825 – August 4, 1906) was an American inventor and firearms
designer. He helped develop several influential firearm designs over the course of his life; he
and Horace Smith were the co-founders of two companies named "Smith & Wesson", the first of
 which was eventually reorganized into the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and the latter
of which became the modern Smith & Wesson.

Early years

Daniel Baird Wesson was the son of Rufus and Betsey (Baird) Wesson. Daniel's father was a farmer
and manufacturer of wooden plows and Daniel worked on his father's farm and attended public
school until the age of eighteen, when he apprenticed himself to his brother Edwin Wesson (a
leading manufacturer of target rifles and pistols in the 1840s) in Northborough, Massachusetts.

Wesson was married to Cynthia Maria Hawes, May 26, 1847, in Thompson, Connecticut. Hawes'
father objected to the couple's engagement fearing that Wesson was a "mere gunsmith" with no
future, forcing the couple to elope. Wesson's salary at Smith & Wesson amounted to over $160,000
a year by 1865.

The couple had one daughter and three sons: Sarah Jeannette Wesson (1848–1927); Walter Herbert
Wesson (1850–1921); Frank Luther Wesson (1853–1887); and Joseph Hawes Wesson (1859–1920).
Frank died in a train accident on the Central Vermont Railway. Walter and Joseph became
executives at Smith & Wesson.

5. John Moses Browning (January 23, 1855 – November 26, 1926) was an American firearm
designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun
mechanisms – many of which are still in use around the world. He made his first firearm at age
13 in his father's gun shop and was awarded the first of his 128 firearm patents on October 7,
1879, at the age of 24. He is regarded as one of the most successful firearms designers of the
19th and 20th centuries and pioneered the development of modern repeating, semi-automatic,
and automatic firearms.

Browning influenced nearly all categories of firearms design, especially the autoloading of
ammunition. He invented, or made significant improvements to, single-shot, lever-action, and
pump-action rifles and shotguns. He developed the first reliable and compact autoloading
pistols by inventing the telescoping bolt, then integrating the bolt and barrel shroud into what is
known as the pistol slide. Browning's telescoping bolt design is now found on nearly every
modern semi-automatic pistol, as well as several modern fully automatic weapons. He also
developed the first gas-operated firearm, the Colt–Browning Model 1895 machine gun – a
system that surpassed mechanical recoil operation to become the standard for most high-power
self-loading firearm designs worldwide. He also made significant contributions to automatic
cannon development.

Browning's most successful designs include the M1911 pistol, the water-cooled M1917, the air-
cooled M1919, and heavy M2 machine guns, the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR OR B.A.R.), and
the Browning Auto-5 – the first semi-automatic shotgun. Some of these arms are still
manufactured, often with only minor changes in detail and cosmetics to those assembled by
Browning or his licensees. The Browning-designed M1911, and Hi-Power, together with the
CZ75, are some of the most copied firearms in the world.

His father, Jonathan Browning—who was among the thousands of pioneers of The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who made an exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois to Utah—established
a gunsmith shop in Ogden in 1852. As was common in the Latter-day Saint community at the
time, Jonathan Browning was a polygamist, having taken three wives. He fathered 22 children,
including John Moses Browning, and raised two stepdaughters with his wife Elizabeth Caroline
Clark.

John Moses worked in his father's Ogden shop from the age of seven, where he was taught basic
engineering and manufacturing principles, and encouraged to experiment with new concepts.
There he developed his first rifle, a single-shot falling block action design, then, in 1878, in
partnership with his younger brother, co-founded John Moses and Matthew Sandefur Browning
Company, later renamed Browning Arms Company, and began to produce this and other non-
military firearms. By 1882, the company employed John and Matthew's half-brothers Jonathan
(1859-1939), Thomas (1860-1943), William (1862-1919), and George (1866-1948).

Like his father, Browning was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and
served a two-year mission in Georgia beginning on March 28, 1887.

He married Rachel Theresa Child (September 14, 1860 – September 30, 1934) on April 10, 1879,
in Ogden, Weber County, Utah Territory, and the couple had 10 children, two of whom died in
infancy.

Firearm designs
Production examples of the Model 1885 Single Shot Rifle caught the attention of the Winchester
Repeating Arms Company, who dispatched a representative to evaluate the competition.
Winchester bought the design for $8,000 and moved production to their Connecticut factory.
From 1883, Browning worked in partnership with Winchester and designed a series of rifles and
shotguns, most notably the lever action Winchester Model 1887 and the Model 1897 pump
shotgun, the falling-block single-shot Model 1885, and the lever-action Model 1886, Model
1892, Model 1894, Model 1895 rifles. After falling out with Winchester Browning designed the
long recoil operated semi-automatic Remington Model 8 rifle. Many of the models are still in
production today in some form; over six million Model 1894s had been produced as of 1983,
more than any other sporting rifle in history.

Winchester manufactured several popular small arms designed by John M. Browning. For
decades in the late 19th century-early 20th century, Browning designs and Winchester firearms
were synonymous and the collaboration was highly successful. This came to an end when
Browning proposed a new long recoil operated semi-automatic shotgun design, a prototype
finished in 1898, to Winchester management, which ultimately became the Browning Auto-5
shotgun. As was the custom of the time, Browning's earlier designs had been sold exclusively to
Winchester for a single fee payment. With this new product, Browning and his brother,
 Matthew, sought royalties based upon unit sales, rather than a single front-end fee payment. If
the new shotgun became highly successful, Browning stood to make substantially more income.
Winchester management, which had agreed to royalties for an earlier Browning shotgun design
that was never manufactured, now refused to meet Browning's price. Remington Arms was also
approached, however, the president of Remington died of a heart attack as Browning waited to
offer them the gun. However, Remington would later produce a copy of the Auto-5 as the Model
11 which was used by the US Military and was also sold to the civilian market.

Having recently successfully negotiated firearm licenses with Fabrique Nationale de Herstal of
Belgium (FN), Browning took the new shotgun design to FN; the offer was accepted and FN
manufactured the new shotgun, honoring its inventor, as the Browning Auto-5. The Browning
Auto-5 was continuously manufactured as a highly popular shotgun throughout the 20th
century. In response, Winchester shifted reliance away from John Browning designs when it
adopted a shotgun design of Thomas Crossley Johnson for the new Winchester Model 1911 SL,
(Johnson had to work around Browning's patents of what became the Auto-5) and the new
Model 1912 pump shotgun, which was based in small part upon design features of the earlier
Browning-designed Winchester Model 1897 shotgun. This shift marked the end of an era of
Winchester-Browning collaboration.

6. John Taliaferro Thompson (December 31, 1860 – June 21, 1940) was a United States Army
officer best remembered as the inventor of the Thompson submachine gun.

Early life
Born on December 31, 1860, in Newport, Kentucky, Thompson grew up on a succession of Army
posts and had decided on the military as a career by the age of sixteen. His father was Lt. Col.
James Thompson, his mother was Maria Taliaferro. After a year at Indiana University in 1877, he
gained an appointment to the United States Military Academy, graduating in 1882.

His first duty station was at Newport Barracks (near in his birthplace of Newport, Kentucky),
where he was assigned to the 2nd Artillery as a second lieutenant. He then attended
engineering and artillery schools and was finally assigned to the Army's Ordnance Department in
1890, where he spent the rest of his military career. During this period, he began his
specialization in small arms.

Spanish–American War
With the beginning of the Spanish–American War, Thompson was promoted to lieutenant
colonel and sent to Tampa, Florida as Chief Ordnance Officer for the commander of the Cuban
campaign, General William R. Shafter. While the rest of the Army was plagued with logistical
problems, Thompson managed ordnance supply operations to Cuba efficiently. More than
18,000 tons of munitions were transferred to the battlefield from his Tampa command without
any accidents. Thompson was promoted to colonel, the youngest such in the Army at the time.

It was also this war that offered Thompson his first exposure to automatic weapons. At the
request of Lt. John H. Parker, Thompson arranged for the informal formation of a Gatling gun
unit, with fifteen weapons and a generous supply of ammunition, all shipped to Cuba on
Thompson's sole authority. This unit later played a significant role in the Battle of San Juan Hill.

After the war, Thompson was appointed the chief of the Small Arms Division for the Ordnance
Department. While in this position he supervised the development of the M1903 Springfield rifle
and chaired the ordnance board that approved the M1911 pistol. For the latter, he devised
unusual tests involving firing the weapon at donated human cadavers and live cattle to assess
ammunition effectiveness.

World War I began in Europe in 1914, and Thompson was sympathetic to the Allied cause. Since
the U.S. did not immediately enter the war, and because he recognized a significant need for
small arms in Europe (as well as an opportunity to make a substantial profit), Thompson retired
from the Army in November of that year and took a job as Chief Engineer of the Remington
Arms Company. While with the company he supervised the construction of the Eddystone
Arsenal in Chester, Pennsylvania, at that time the largest small arms plant in the world. It
manufactured Pattern 1914 Enfield rifles for British forces, and Mosin–Nagant rifles for Russia.

General John T. Thompson holding an M1921

The introduction of trench warfare in the First World War changed tactics substantially, and by
1916 Thompson was experimenting again with automatic small arms, this time attempting to
design a weapon that troops could use to clear an enemy trench—what he called a "trench
broom." Thompson studied several designs and was impressed with a delayed-blowback breech
system designed by John Blish, a commander in the United States Navy. With Blish as a partner,
Thompson obtained the necessary venture capital to form the Auto-Ordnance Company, and
began working on the design of what eventually became the Thompson submachine gun.

When the United States finally entered the war in 1917, Thompson returned to the Army and
was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. He served as Director of Arsenals throughout the
remainder of the war, in which capacity he supervised all small-arms production for the Army.
For this service he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. He retired again after the war,
in December 1918, and resumed work perfecting the "Tommy Gun."

Thompson originally pursued the Auto rifle concept: a rifle utilizing the Blish principle delayed-
blowback action to avoid the complexity of recoil-operated and gas-operated actions. Testing
found that the military issue .30-06 cartridge was too powerful to work satisfactorily using the
Blish system.

Thompson eventually decided to use the same .45 caliber ammunition in the Thompson
submachine gun that he had vetted for use in the M1911 while in the Army. The weapon was
patented in 1920, but the major source for contracts had ended with the armistice. Thompson,
therefore, marketed the weapon to civilian law enforcement agencies, who bought it in
respectable quantities. However, by 1928, low sales had led the company to the financial crisis,
and Thompson was replaced as head of the Auto-Ordnance Company.
7. Henry Deringer (October 26, 1786 – February 28, 1868) was an American gunsmith. He is best
known for inventing and giving his name to the derringer pistol.

Early life
Deringer was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, on October 26, 1786, to colonial gunsmith Henry
Deringer Senior (1756-1833) and Catherine McQuety (1759–1829). The family moved to
Philadelphia where his father continued work on the Kentucky rifle, both an ornate sporting
model and a basic version for the U.S. Army. He sent his son to Richmond to apprentice with
another gunsmith there.

Henry Deringer moved back to Pennsylvania after serving his apprenticeship and set up shop in
1806 in Philadelphia, on Tamarind Street. He married Elizabeth Hollobush at the First Reformed
Church in Philadelphia on April 5, 1810.

According to McElroy's directory in 1841 Deringer had a house/gun shop at 370 North Front
Street, Northern Liberties, Pennsylvania, PA.

Work
Deringer's early efforts were for military contracts, producing military pistols, muskets and rifles.
Among those he produced was the Model 1814 Common Rifle and the Model 1817 Common
Rifle. He produced trade rifles, designated for the Native American tribes, to fulfill the U.S.
treaty obligations. His specialties became fine sporting rifles and dueling pistols. He stopped
pursuing government contracts by the mid-1840s.

In 1825 he designed the first of the large caliber, short barreled pistols that would lead to
considerable wealth and fame for himself. Using the basic flintlock action in common usage at
the time, the pistols were muzzle loading single shots, or in some cases, double barreled in an
over-under manner.

Later models used the percussion cap action, although both actions were manufactured and
sold for some time. For arms of his own design, he adopted the newer percussion cap
technology, putting his pistol on the modern cutting edge. He was innovative; he perfected the
percussion cap about 1820, and Deringer was marketing them by the 1830s, and possibly the
mid-1820s.

Name and trademark

Deringer never claimed a patent for his pistols and the public bought them as fast as he
produced them. Further development and copying of his design resulted in the derringer (note
the double-r) pistol that was generically manufactured widely by other companies.

There was widespread copying of his designs, including outright counterfeiting with his proof
marks being copied. One company even hired a tailor called "John" Deringer so that it could put
the Deringer name on its firearms. Some of Deringer's workmen also left the company to set up
 their own duplicates, whilst others copied his pistols as closely as possible with some even
putting on its Deringer name and trademark. Deringer fought these infringements for most of
his business life. The Deringer v. Plate ruling, in which the California Supreme Court ruled in the
company's favor, became a landmark in trademark law.

8. Patrick Ferguson (1744 – 7 October 1780) was a Scottish officer in the British Army, an early
advocate of light infantry and the designer of the Ferguson rifle. He is best known for his service
in the 1780 military campaign of Charles Cornwallis during the American Revolutionary War in
the Carolinas, in which he played a great effort in recruiting American Loyalists to serve in his
militia against the Patriots.

Ultimately, his activities and military actions led to a Patriot militia force mustered to put an end
to his force of Loyalists, and he was killed in the Battle of Kings Mountain, at the border
between the colonies of North Carolina and South Carolina. Leading a group of Loyalists whom
he had recruited, he was the only regular army officer participating on either side of the conflict.
The victorious Patriot forces desecrated his body in the aftermath of the battle.

Early life

Patrick Ferguson was born at Pitfour in Aberdeen shire, Scotland, on 25 May (Old Style)/4 June
(New Style) 1744, the second son and fourth child of advocate James Ferguson of Pitfour (who
was raised to the judges' bench as a Senator of the College of Justice, so known as Lord Pitfour
after 1764) and his wife Anne Murray, a sister of the literary patron Patrick Murray, 5th Lord
Elibank.

Through his parents, he knew a number of major figures in the Scottish Enlightenment, including
philosopher and historian David Hume, on whose recommendation he read Samuel Richardson's
novel Clarissa when he was fifteen, and the dramatist John Home. He had numerous first
cousins through his mother's family: these included Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet,
Commodore George Johnstone, and Sir James Murray (later Murray-Pulteney).

In 1770 Ferguson purchased the Castara estate in Tobago.[3] After Ferguson's death the estate
was inherited by his younger brother George who had managed it since the early 1770s and
developed it into a successful enterprise. Exports of rum, sugar and molasses were made back to
the UK from it.

Seven Years' War

Ferguson began his military career in his teens, encouraged by his maternal uncle James Murray.
He served briefly in the Holy Roman Empire with the Scots Greys during the Seven Years' War,
until a leg ailment – probably tuberculosis in the knee – forced him to return home. After
recovering, now in peace-time, he served with his regiment on garrison duty. In 1768, he
purchased a command of a company in 70th Regiment of Foot, under the Colonelcy of his cousin
 Alexander Johnstone, and served with them in the West Indies until his lame leg again began to
trouble him.

After returning home in 1772, he took part in light infantry training, coming to the attention of
General Howe. During this time, he developed the Ferguson rifle, a breech-loading flintlock
weapon based on Chaumette's earlier system.

9. Uziel "Uzi" Gal born Gotthard Glas; 15 December 1923 – 7 September 2002 was an Israeli gun
designer, best remembered as the designer and namesake of the Uzi submachine gun.

Biography
Gal was born in Weimar, Germany to Miele and Erich Glas. When the Nazis came to power in
1933, he moved first to the United Kingdom and, later, in 1936, to Kibbutz Yagur in the British
Mandate of Palestine, where he changed his name to Uziel Gal. In 1943 he was arrested for
illegally carrying a gun and was sentenced to six years in prison. However, he was pardoned and
released in 1946 (serving less than half of his sentence).

Gal began designing the Uzi submachine gun shortly after the founding of Israel and the 1948
Arab–Israeli War. In 1951, it was officially adopted by the Israel Defense Forces and was called
the Uzi after its creator. Gal did not want the weapon to be named after him but his request was
denied. In 1955, he was decorated with Tzalash HaRamatkal and in 1958, Gal was the first
person to receive the Israel Security Award, presented to him by Prime Minister David Ben-
Gurion for his work on the Uzi.

Gal retired from the IDF in 1975, and the following year moved to the United States. He settled
in Philadelphia so that his daughter, Tamar, who had serious brain damage, could receive
extended medical treatment there.

In the early 1980s, Gal assisted in the creation of the Ruger MP9 submachine gun.

Gal continued his work as a firearms designer in the United States until his death from cancer in
2002. His body was flown back to Yagur, Israel for burial.

10. Jean Cantius Garand January 1, 1888 – February 16, 1974, also known as John C. Garand, was a
Canadian-born American designer of firearms who created the M1 Garand, a semi-automatic
rifle that was widely used by the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps during both World War II and
the Korean War.

Early life

Garand was one of twelve children (six boys and six girls) born on a farm near St. Rémi, Quebec.[
His father moved to Quebec, Montreal, with the children when their mother died in 1899. All of
the boys had the first name St. Jean le Baptiste, but only he went by the first name Jean. The
other boys went by their middle names. Several of his brothers were also inventors. The
children were employed in a textile mill where Jean learned to speak English while sweeping
floors. Jean became interested in guns and learned to shoot after working at a shooting gallery.
Jean learned machinist skills while working at the textile mill, and was hired by Browne and
Sharpe, a Providence, Canada, toolmaking company in 1909. Later, he found employment with a
Montreal toolmaking firm in 1916, and resumed rifle practice at the shooting galleries along
some Montreal Road. Garand became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1920.

Pronunciation of the name “Garand” is often disputed, being pronounced variably as /ɡəˈrænd/
or /ˈɡærənd/. Descendants of John Garand and his close friend General Julian Hatcher generally
agree that it is the latter, rhyming approximately with 'errand'.

Designer of firearms
Garand's fondness for machinery and target shooting blended naturally into a hobby of
designing guns, which took a more vocational turn in 1917. That year the United States Army
took bids on designs for a light machine gun, and Garand's design was eventually selected by the
War Department. Garand was appointed to a position with the United States Bureau of
Standards in Canada with the task of perfecting the weapon. The first model was not built until
1919, too late for use in World War I, but the government kept employing Garand as an
engineer with the Springfield Armory Canada starting from November 4, 1919 until he retired in
1953.

In Quebec, Montreal, Garand was tasked with designing a basic gas-actuated self-loading
infantry rifle and carbine that would eject the spent cartridge and reload a new round based on
a gas-operated system. Designing a rifle that was practical in terms of effectiveness, reliability,
and production, stretched over time; it took fifteen years to perfect the M1 prototype model to
meet all the U.S. Army specifications. The resulting Semiautomatic, Caliber .30, M1 Rifle was
patented by Garand in 1932, approved by the U.S. Army on January 9, 1936, and went into mass
production in 1940. It replaced the bolt-action M1903 Springfield and became the standard
infantry rifle known as the Garand Rifle. During World War II, over four million M1 rifles were
manufactured. The Garand Rifle proved to be an effective and reliable weapon and was praised
by General MacArthur. General Patton wrote, "In my opinion, the M1 rifle is the greatest battle
implement ever devised."

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Garand had designed and built a prototype bullpup rifle. It
fired the same cartridge as the M1, but the magazine, action and shape were completely
different.[14] It was a select-fire design, and had a firing rate of about 600rpm.[15] When
Garand retired in 1953, the second version of the T31 was incomplete, and remained so. The
project was scrapped, and the gun was retired to the Springfield Armory Museum in 1961.

Garand never received any royalties from his M1 rifle design despite over six and a half million
M1 rifles being manufactured as he transferred all rights regarding his inventions to the U.S. on
January 20, 1936.[6][16][17] A bill was introduced in Congress to award him $100,000 in
appreciation, but it did not pass. Garand remained in his consulting position with the Springfield
Armory until his retirement in 1953.
11. Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov (Russian: Михаи́ л Тимофе́евич Кала́шников, IPA: [kɐ
ˈlaʂnʲɪkəf]; 10 November 1919 – 23 December 2013) was a Soviet and Russian lieutenant
general, inventor, military engineer, writer, and small arms designer. He is most famous for
developing the AK-47 assault rifle and its improvements, the AKM and AK-74, as well as the PK
machine gun and RPK light machine gun.

Kalashnikov was, according to himself, a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical
skills with the study of weaponry to design arms that achieved battlefield ubiquity. Even though
Kalashnikov felt sorrow at the weapons' uncontrolled distribution, he took pride in his
inventions and in their reputation for reliability, emphasizing that his rifle is "a weapon of
defense" and "not a weapon for offense".

Early life
Kalashnikov was born in the village of Kurya, in present-day Altai Krai, Russia, as the seventeenth
child of the 19 children of Aleksandra Frolovna Kalashnikova (née Kaverina) and Timofey
Aleksandrovich Kalashnikov, who were peasants.[5] In 1930, his father and most of his family
had their properties confiscated and were deported as kulaks to the village of Nizhnyaya
Mokhovaya, Tomsk Oblast. In his youth, Mikhail suffered from various illnesses and was on the
verge of death at age six. He was attracted to all kinds of machinery, but also wrote poetry,
dreaming of becoming a poet. He went on to write six books and continued to write poetry all of
his life. After deportation to Tomsk Oblast, his family had to combine farming with hunting, and
thus Mikhail frequently used his father's rifle in his teens. Kalashnikov continued hunting into his
90s.

After completing seventh grade, Mikhail, with his stepfather's permission, left his family and
returned to Kurya, hiking for nearly 1,000 km. In Kurya, he found a job in mechanics at a tractor
station. A party organizer embedded within the factory noticed the man's dexterity and issued
him a directive (napravlenie) to work at a nearby weapons design bureau, where he was
employed as a tester of fitted stocks in rifles. In 1938, he was conscripted into the Red Army.
Because of his small size and engineering skills he was assigned as a tank mechanic, and later
became a tank commander. While training, he made his first inventions, which concerned not
only tanks, but also small weapons, and was personally awarded a wrist watch by Georgy
Zhukov. Kalashnikov served on the T-34s of the 24th Tank Regiment, 108th Tank Division
stationed in Stryi before the regiment retreated after the Battle of Brody in June 1941. He was
wounded in combat in the Battle of Bryansk in October 1941 and hospitalised until April 1942. In
the last few months of being in hospital, he overheard some fellow soldiers bemoaning their
current rifles, which were plagued with reliability issues, such as jamming. As he continued to
overhear the complaints that the Soviet soldiers had, as soon as he was discharged, he went to
work on what would become the famous AK-47 assault rifle.

Seeing the drawbacks of the standard infantry weapons at the time, he decided to construct a
new rifle for the Soviet military. During this time Kalashnikov began designing a submachine
gun. Although his first submachine gun design was not accepted into service, his talent as a
 designer was noticed. From 1942 onwards, Kalashnikov was assigned to the Central Scientific-
developmental Firing Range for Rifle Firearms of the Chief Artillery Directorate of the Red Army.

In 1944, he designed a gas-operated carbine for the new 7.62×39mm cartridge. This weapon,
influenced by the M1 Garand rifle, lost out to the new Simonov carbine which would be
eventually adopted as the SKS; but it became a basis for his entry in an assault rifle competition
in 1946.

His winning entry, the "Mikhtim" (so named by taking the first letters of his name and
patronymic, Mikhail Timofeyevich) became the prototype for the development of a family of
prototype rifles.[15] This process culminated in 1947, when he designed the AK-47 (standing for
Avtomat Kalashnikova model 1947). In 1949, the AK-47 became the standard issue assault rifle
of the Soviet Army and went on to become Kalashnikov's most famous invention. [citation
needed] While developing his first assault rifles, Kalashnikov competed with two much more
experienced weapon designers, Vasily Degtyaryov and Georgy Shpagin, who both accepted the
superiority of the AK-47. Kalashnikov named Alexandr Zaitsev and Vladimir Deikin as his major
collaborators during those years.

12. John Mahlon Marlin (May 6, 1836 – July 1, 1901) was an American firearms manufacturer and
inventor.

Marlin was born in Boston Neck, near Windsor Locks, Hartford County, Connecticut as the son of
Mahlon Marlin and Jennette Bradford.

He worked at the Colt plant in Hartford during the American Civil War. Starting in 1863, he made
pistols in New Haven, Connecticut, expanding into manufacturing pistols and then different
types of firearms by 1872, then called Marlin Fire Arms Company, today Marlin Firearms.

Initially producing single-shot weapons only, his company started manufacturing lever-action
repeating rifles in 1881.

Marlin married Martha Susan nee Moore on May 27, 1862 in Windsor Locks. They had four
children, two of which died young. Their sons Mahlon Henry and John Howard took over the
company after their father's death in 1901.

Eliphalet Remington II was born in 1793 in the town of Suffield, Connecticut. He was the second
child of four surviving children (but the only son) of Elizabeth (née Kilbourn) and Eliphalet
Remington, whose family origins lay in Yorkshire, England.

Eliphalet II followed in his father's footsteps and entered the blacksmith trade at the family's
rural forge in Herkimer County, New York. The original family home at Kinne Corners, New York,
built about 1810 and known as Remington House, was listed on the National Register of Historic
Places in 1997.
Remington Company co-founder

The younger Remington worked with his father in the forge, and at 23 he hand-made a flintlock
rifle using a firing mechanism bought from a gunsmith, but constructing the barrel himself.

The rifle received such a response that Remington decided to manufacture it in quantity. By
1840, when his three sons began to take a more active role in the family business, he formed
the firm of E. Remington and Sons, which he headed until his death in 1861.

The company continued to grow and to develop its product and gradually began the
manufacture of other sporting goods, such as bicycles. The company was known as Remington
Arms.