What was the First Automatic Pistol?
Semiauto Pistols
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6m 53s
What was the first true semiautomatic pistol? Let's take a look...
Before there were self-loading pistols, there were manually operated repeating pistols with magazines - like the 1850s Volcanics. A surprising number of this type of pistol were developed in Austria in the 1880s, and they led directly to some of the first blowback automatic pistols, like the Laumann and Schonberger-Laumann. However, there was also some early guns designed from the ground up as semiautos, like the Dormus. The C93 Borchardt is agreed to be the first commercially successful pistol, but what other designs came first that were functional but not successful?
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