Roth-Theodorovic Prototype Pistol
Forgotten Weapons
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13m
Georg Roth's company in Austria presided over a wonderful variety of interesting handgun development, and this is one example of that lineage. Roth's licensed or purchased the patent for this pistol from its inventor, Wasa Theodorovic, and turned it over to his engineer Karel Krnka to develop (I'm simplifying this). The design used a long recoil action and a rotating bolt, elements which would later find their way into the designs of Rudolf Frommer, who worked at FEG where the Roth pistols were manufactured.
About 80 of these Roth-Theodorovic-Krnka pistols were made, with no two quite the same. They were in a constant process of development and improvement, and this (serial number 77) is one of the very last ones. It exhibits a quite refined fire control system with single and double action modes as well as a decocker. It is made yet more interesting by the addition of a grip safety, which does not appear to be a factory element. Instead, it appears to be a design patented by Tambour and installed by a contemporary gunsmith. Tambour safeties were put in a number of other types of guns at the time, including Mannlicher 1901/1905 pistols.
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