In August 1903, Thomas Bennett (head of the Winchester company) wrote a letter to his many distributors and agents explaining how Winchester had decided to part ways with the Browning Brothers, and how the company would certainly be better off as a result. The gun at the heart of the breakup was Browning's new self-loading shotgun, the Auto-5. Browning would end up taking the design the FN, where it became a massive commercial success - but the whole story is really much more nuanced than most people recognize.

This isn't simply a matter of Browning demanding a royalty arrangement, but rather much more...