The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: TAB on March 09, 2014, 08:58:29 PM
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today I was watching episode on John Moses Browning. one of the commentators asked a very interesting question. paraphrasing he wanted to know what type of other advancements we might have had had John Moses Browning not just been interested in guns and had other interests? what if you've met the Wright brothers or Henry Ford etc etc. for the most part every single fire are manufactured today can you there be traced back to a John Moses Browning design or one that he perfected.
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JMB was a genius. If he applied himself in other areas I'm sure he would have come up with something new.
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I believe that JMB affected other areas of manufacture. How we do business and innovate is driven by our competitors, allies, and associates. Every innovation by JMB radiated out through the manufacturing communities in how to mass produce, compete, and how to translate his success to other industries.
You can ask what if Henry Ford had not been so driven with automobiles, but he was. Clothing, plastics, bbq, recycling, power generation, and manufacture efficiency just to name a few.
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I have a better question, what would guns look like if the NFA act in '36 didn't pass? ;D
JMB was brilliant but I think much of what he did would have been done by someone else eventually. People work on all kinds of "new" gun designs yet there is truly nothing new under the sun.
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Where would pistols be without the JMB tilting barrel designs? Most pistols 9mm and over use it.
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Henry Ford "invented" the Kingsford charcoal briquette.
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Yep. He did it to make money on scrap wood from car making.
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Yep. He did it to make money on scrap wood from car making.
'Nothing wasted' was a common philosophy then....sadly, a lost concept these days.
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'Nothing wasted' was a common philosophy then....sadly, a lost concept these days.
Especially with Henry Ford. The story I read is Ford hated waste. He had plenty of scrap wood waste from the production of all the wooden wheels he used on the Model A, and Model T Ford cars. He liked to go on motorized camping trips with his wealthy industrialist friends and relatives, E.G. Kingsford among them.
One disadvantage was on most of these trips they had to bring their own wood for cooking and fires. They mutually discovered the need for readily available charcoal. E.G. Kingsford, who was a relative of Ford's, brokered the site selection for Ford's new charcoal manufacturing plant. The company, originally called Ford Charcoal, was renamed in E.G.’s honor. All of the wood at the time, came from Ford's wooden wheel manufacturing facilities. The rest is history, as yet another multi million dollar business was created from nothing but wood scraps.
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An important thing to remember is that JMB was always someone else s employee , First his Father, and brothers, then Winchester, Colt, and FN, (which was started long before JMB ).
He also NEVER worked in any other industry, Browning was strictly a "Gun maker".
If you want to talk about inventors Browning isn't even in the running.
Hiram Maxine had dozens of patents in gas lighting, compressed gasses, and a dozen other fields before he ever turned his hand to the one gun he designed. He also made huge breakthroughs in formulating black powder, and when his lungs started going bad he designed and built his own "iron lung".
Then there is Dr Gatling.
Invented a screw propeller for ships at 18.
Unfortunately he waited for spring before going to Washington to file his patent application, John Erickson didn't and beat him by 2 months .
After that Gatling did not wait when he came up with a "seed drill" and other farm implements .
Even Colt was more innovative, Browning built guns.
Colt designed a gun system, then he turned around and designed or modified the tools and machines to build them, tools and machines that are still being used 150 years later.