FORGOTTEN WEAPONS - Key Persons
Arthur Savage, however, could not be tied down to the company. In 1905 he sold his interest in the firm and moved to California and took up the orange-growing business. This, predictably, lasted on a few years, and in 1911 his interested turned instead to automobiles and he moved to San Diego and patented the radial tire. In this pursuit he formed the Savage Tire Company, which he ran until selling it in 1919. Savage continued to tinker with guns during this time, and in 1917 formed a new gun company in partnership with his son Arthur J, although the company was unsuccessful. Savage would go on to involve himself in oil drilling, gold mining, pipe, brick, and tile manufacture, ceramics, and to manage the San Gabriel Water Company for a time. His string of new adventures would come to an end in 1938, when he found himself diagnosed with a painful and terminal form of cancer. Arthur Savage was not a man to he held down, and the prospect of a slow and lingering death must have been utterly abhorrent to him. As was his nature, he took dramatic action and ended his own life on September 22, 1938 with a single shot from a pistol. He was 83 years of age.
Christopher Spencer was born on a farm in Manchester, Connecticut on June 20th, 1833, the son of Ogden Spencer and Asenath Hollister. At the age of 12 (in 1845), young Christopher moved into the home of his maternal grandfather Josiah Hollister, than 90 years of age. Josiah was a veteran of the American Revolution and a gunsmith, and he nurtured and encourages Christopher's interest in firearms and machinery. One of his favorite pastimes was working with his grandfather's old foot lathe, making intricate knick-knacks of wood. His grandfather also gave him his first firearm, a Revolutionary-era musket. In a classic example of the American spirit of tinkering, he immediately sporterized it, sawing off the barrel to make it handier for hunting (yes I can hear all the collector's cringing at the thought - but wouldn't you like to have it today anyway?).
At the age of 14 (in 1847) Spencer left home to work as an apprentice in a local silk mill owned by two brothers, Charles and Rush Cheney - who would be close partners with him for many years to come. This initial employment lasted barely a year, and in 1848 Spencer took on a more advanced apprenticeship with machinist Samuel Loomis in Manchester Center, CT. It seems quite likely that this apprenticeship was taken with the blessing of the Cheneys, for at its conclusion he returned to work in their silk mill. It is also worth noting that the winter of 1848 was the only time Spencer spent in school - 12 weeks in the Wilbraham Academy in Massachusetts.
With the experience of his work for the Cheneys and his machinist's apprenticeship, Spencer's mechanical genius really showed itself. His real passion, I suspect, was machines to make things - not necessarily the final product itself. Working for several years in the Cheneys' silk mill, he developed several new machines, as well as showing a real talent for repairing and maintaining machinery. He did wander out form under the Cheneys' wing to expand his understanding with stints working in other shops, including the New York Central Railroad locomotive repair shop, the Ames Manufacturing Company (a sword and cutlery maker) and a year working for Colt in Hartford.
Returning home from Colt with some newly-planted ideas for improved firearms designs, Spencer went back to work for the Cheneys, this time as superintendent of their new shop in Hartford. He was clearly quite at home in this environment, as he spent 11-hour days in his formal job (including inventing and patenting silk winding machine which they Cheneys sold quite a few of, and paid him a royalty on), and then spent his spare time tinkering in the shop with his ideas for a repeating firearms which would eventually become the 1860 Spencer rifle. He made a wooden mockup of the gun in 1857 (sadly, this first model appears to be lost to time). Spencer's father Ogden financed the initial prototype (which ended up costing $293.67 to make) in exchange for a 50% share of future profits, and when the Civil War broke out the Cheney brothers became very interested in producing the gun for military contracts. They bought the patent from Spencer for $5000 and a royalty of $1 per gun sold.
Christopher Spencer was one of the stereotypical 19th century American inventors who had no need of formal education and simply believed that an individual's drive to invent and experiment could bring about wondrous new possibilities. He was always in the shop getting his hands dirty, and it made him a wealthy man.
"the north too imported guns, not just Enfields (in massive quantities) but Austrian Lorenz rifles, for instance". The North was also trying to use its economic power to tie up all of Europe's industrial output so that the South had no where to buy munitions. One of histories first examples of total warfare in action. Dean Reply
I'm the great great grandson of James Paris Lee Enfield…He did it right..Where would we be if he didn't make the Enfield rifle..?
Henri Pieper (left) and Nicolas Pieper (right)
Henri Pieper was born and raised in modest German home in Soest (Westphalia) Germany on Oct 30, 1840. He received his technical training in Soest and then in Warstein. Then emigrated to Belgium at the end of 1859. Moving around from Herstal and a short period in the wool industry of Verviers, he finally settled in Liege after marriage. He established his firearm manufacturing business "Anciens Etablissements Pieper" in Liege in 1866. The rapid growth and success of his business was partly due to an excellent decision he made early on in the purchase of a barrel factory in Nessonvaux. Some of Remington's finest double shotguns of the time have the maker's mark of ‘HP' on them from this factory. It didn't take long for him to become famous for quality and moderate prices.
James Paris Lee was a firearms designer whose inventions had a far greater historical significance than even most firearms enthusiasts realize. Where Lee is recognized at all, it is generally for the rifles that bear his name - the Remington-Lee, the 1895 Lee Navy, the Lee-Metford, and (of course) the Lee-Enfield. What most don't realize is that James Lee was in fact the inventor of the detachable box magazine. His vision of the rifle magazine (and by extension, pistol magazines as well) has remained largely unchanged right up to the present day.
Lee was born on August 9th, 1831 in the southern Scottish town of Hawick to George and Margaret Lee. The family emigrated to Ontario when James was just 4 or 5 years old, and he spent his boyhood growing up in the town of Galt (now called Cambridge). James took naturally to the forests around Cambridge, as well as inheriting his father's mechanical aptitude (the man worked as a talented watchmaker and jeweler). What James did not inherit, it seems, was a watchmaker's dexterity. His developmental years were rather liberally sprinkled with firearms accidents, and he is lucky to have escaped them all without any disabling injuries.
At the age of 12, Lee built his first firearm. He began with a old horse pistol from his father's collection to get a barrel (long enough to be a rifle for a youngster of 12), and bought a piece of walnut for a penny to carve into a stock. He made a new priming pan out of a half-penny coin, and proceeded to load it up with powder, wad, and a piece of lead hammered into the shape of a bullet. What he did not recognize was than the flash hole in the horse pistol barrel was missing its bushing, and thus significantly oversized. Upon firing (which was accomplished by James aiming the gun at a tree while his brother Jack applied a match to the pan) the gun blew back rather violently, injuring James' chin.
Not to be dissuaded, Lee continued to be an eager hunter and outdoorsman, and injured himself rather more seriously in a later adolescent camping trip. He was attempting to use some gunpowder to help ignite a campfire, and the resulting explosion left him with severe burns that took several months to recover from. Continuing his streak of bad luck (or bad choices, one might suggest), he managed to accidentally shoot himself in the heel on a hunting excursion. He was 16 years old and out hunting on a cold October day when his shotgun slipped from chilled fingers and discharged upon hitting the ground. The load of shot hit him square in the heel, and by the time he made it back to his home he was in shock and had suffered significant blood loss. That particular incident left him hospitalized for a year and a half. He would walk with a limp and a cane ever after - although his gait (and reportedly his temper) improved 50 years later when a New York doctor removed several leftover pieces of shot from his foot.
In 1848, at the age of 17 and presumably at the end of his recuperation from the wound James was apprenticed formally in his father's watch shop, and he left a scant 2 years later to open his own shop in Chatham, Ontario. He may have been accident-prone, but he was a clever and able worker. In 1852 or 53 he met and married Caroline Chrysler, and they had a son named William in 1855. Their second son, George, was born in 1859 after the family has moved from Canada to the United States - Janesville, Wisconsin specifically. Lee never did gain US citizenship, although he reportedly did apply for it.
Lee's first serious forays into forearms design came with the onset of the US Civil War. In 1861 he successfully developed a breech-loading conversion for the Springfield muzzle-loader, for which he was able to wrangle a 1000-unit order in 1864 from the Federal government. He collaborated with Philo Remington among others and set up a factory to produce his rifles in Milwaukee, only to have the contract cancelled with the Confederate surrender. He sued the government for $15,000 in expenses and damages, but was awarded less than half that amount (which was still better than many would-be arms manufacturers made out from the war).
However, Lee's work with Remington was to develop into a long-time association, and he would work for Remington in Ilion, New York for many years and Remington would be the manufacturer for most of his rifle designs - but not without an initial hiccup.
Lee was awarded patent #221,328 on November 4th, 1879 for the vertical box magazine - thereby solving the serious problem of cartridge detonation in tube magazines. Lee (and other inventors) had been approached by the Sharps Rifle Company in 1876 about development of a magazine, and Lee ultimately made an agreement with them for the manufacture of his new Magazine Rifle (Model 1879). Remington at the time was focused on the Remington-Keene tube-magazine rifle for US Army trials, and presumably was not willing to split its efforts - so Lee left to work with Sharps instead. Here he worked with Hugo Borchardt (yes, that Borchardt) to improve the magazine (and Borchardt was granted a patent for magazine improvements in 1882).
The Lee Magazine Rifle was aggressively marketed by Sharps, and a contract for 300 was obtained from the US Navy. However, on October 18, 1880 the Sharps company went bankrupt, with only the first bit of work being finished on the Navy contract rifle receivers. At this point the Remington-Keene had been proven a failure in military trials, and Lee was able to return to Remington, who would produce his rifles in the US for many years to come.
Lee's magazine was revolutionary, and virtually all existing bolt action rifles, from the Dreyse to the Murata were experimentally altered to use it. It was so influential that reportedly the Mauser company rented a room above his lodgings in a hotel across the street from Remington's Ilion plant in order to drill a hole through the floor and spy on his work (although there appears to be no proof this was true). This interest in his magazine system saw Lee (and his wife Caroline) travel to Britain and continental Europe through the 1880s marketing guns, and these trips ultimately led to the British adoption of the Lee rifle in 1887.
Alas, Caroline fell ill and died in London in 1888, and Lee returned to New York, never to travel overseas again. The two of them had been quite close, and Lee never really recovered from her death emotionally. His own death came in 1904, at the age of 71.
James Paris Lee's legacy lives on today in the millions of Lee-Enfield rifles manufactured on four different continents, and in the box magazine system used almost universally to this day.
Am the grandaughter of C.M.Spencer. .P.H.Spencebeing my grandfather,u did get the pleasure to know,spend time with. . Attending air-shows,when we could ,watching him in his element. . He was so passionate about flying. . Am just now starting to read and discover in depth the civil war,the tremendous contributions C.M.made. . I want my 2 sons to have a fresh take on there roots. . Reply
Billings and Spencer was a major subcontractor in the Connecticut valley gun trade. A.C.Gould in his book The Modern American rifle lists many of the forgings that Billings and Spencer made for such companies as Marlin. So Spencer's connection to the firearms industry is greater than first realized. Reply
Job Titles:
- Designer of the Model 110
Nicolas Pieper was born in Liege on October 31, 1870. The second son of Henri Pieper and Catherine Elisabeth Leroy. At the early age of 13 he was training with his father. Before his fathers premature death at the age of 57, he took the helm of the firearms factory in Liege while his brother Edouard Herman took over the barrel factory in Nessonvaux.
Re James Paris Lee…..I have an old 12g single barrel breaking breech hammerless shotgun. It has stamped along the barrel the words, "James P Lee. Gunmaker. Ithaca New York. Do you know of any factory of his in Ithaca NY and/or anything about sporting firearms that he may have made?
Christopher Spencer was one of the stereotypical 19th century American inventors who had no need of formal education and simply believed that an individual's drive to invent and experiment could bring about wondrous new possibilities. He was always in the shop getting his hands dirty, and it made him a wealthy man.
Theodor Bergmann of Bergmanns Industriewerke had won a small 3,000 gun contract with the Spain but failed to find funding to manufacture them and sold his Spanish contract to Anciens Établissements Pieper. Nicolas Pieper had been seeking new business since he had lost his Belgian army contracts to Fabrique Nationale. Nicolas Pieper also bought the rights to manufacture and sell a commercial version of the Bergman Mars.
William John Whiting is not a name known to most gun collectors today, because the guns he spent a lifetime working on were never marked with his name, but rather with the name of Webley & Scott. Whiting was born in the industrial coal country of England, specifically a town called Darlaston located about 8 miles northwest of Birmingham. Of course, anyone loosely familiar with British firearms will recognize that Birmingham was a center of arms production for great many years, thanks to its renowned coal and steel production and concentration of craftsmen. Whiting was born the eldest son of William Flint Whiting and Hannah Wiles, on September 13th, 1864 (naming the first son after the father was something of a tradition). As a child, Whiting attended school at the St. Lawrence church, and form a very early age he became interested in following in his father's footsteps.
The elder William Flint Whiting (who was in his early twenties when William John was born) was employed as a gun lock filer, and he taught Whiting the basics of the gunsmithing trade. By the time Whiting was 9 years of age, he was relatively proficient with a file, and this interest in gunmaking would stay with him throughout his life. His father provided him with old or broken firearms to repair, allowing him to develop an understanding of how the mechanisms worked and how to manipulate them.
In 1873, Whiting's father was hired on by the firm of Webley & Son in Birmingham, and the family moved to the northern outskirts of that city (well, that was on the northern outskirts at the time). After a few years in another church school (where he excelled, and the headmaster encouraged pupils to develop an interest in technology), Whiting was offered a job at Webley, working alongside his father and the company's expert gunsmiths. Whilliam John by this time has three brothers and three sisters, and none of his brothers showed any particular interest in guns the way he did. The Webley firm was quite interested in grooming dedicated young men into becoming loyal and expert workers, and Whiting was formally Indentured as an apprentice on his 16th birthday in 1881 - a commitment that would last 5 years.
By the end of that term - and his 21st birthday - Whiting was an acknowledged Tool Maker at Webley & Son, and applied for his first British patent that very year, in 1886. The patent was for a bushing that would prevent black powder residue from getting into the space between a revolver cylinder and the axis pin it rotated on. Around this same time, Webley perfected their hinge-framed revolver, allowing simultaneous ejection of the whole cylinder full of empty cases, and received the first of many major government contracts. Business was good at Webley, and William John Whiting would have his fortunes tied to the company for many years to come.
In 1888 he began his own family by marrying Harriette May Busst, daughter of another gunsmith. Their first child was born late that year, and (in the family tradition) named William James Whiting. At this time he was experimenting with new pistol designs at Webley, starting with a concealed-hammer revolver which was patented with his co-designer John Carter in 1888.
Whiting's star continued to rise at Webley, with his promotion to Workshop Foreman at the age of 25 and then Works Manager at age 28, upon the unexpected illness and death of his father, who had previously held the position. By this time Whiting and Harriette had four children, and he was about to really come into his element professionally. In 1896, Colonel George Fosbery approached the Webley firm looking for a manufacturer for his automatic revolver. For the next several years Whiting worked to help refine the design into its 1901 production model. Self-loading pistols were looking like the wave of the future, and Webley thought the Fosbery design would be an ideal way to capitalize on that trend while still exploiting their expertise in revolver manufacture.
In 1903, a number of elements changed in Whiting's life. The end of the Boer Wars, combined with new British restrictions on civilian pistol ownership left Birmingham in general and Webley in particular in tough financial straits. Sales of Webley-Fosbery automatic revolvers, while certainly profitable, were not a replacement for the military contracts of years past. Whiting was offered (and accepted) a position on Webley's Board of Directors, and dove into design of a true self-loading pistol for British military use - which required use of the rimmed .455 cartridge. While this work would not bear fruit for more than a decade in it's original application, Whiting's adaptation and conversion of his basic design to .32 and .25 cartridges would prove to be the financial thread that kept Webley & Scott alive until WWI caused a resurgence in large military orders. Ironically, the sudden demand for the standard military model revolvers would largely force the abandonment of self-loader development, as the military lost interest in unproven new designs and the company no longer had the excess capacity to spare.
Job Titles:
- Secretary of the Treasury