Portal:Utah/Selected biography/19

John Moses Browning (January 21, 1855 – November 26, 1926), born in Ogden, Utah, was an American firearms designer who developed myriad varieties of weapons, cartridges, and gun mechanics, many of which are used in the U.S. military and elsewhere to this day. He is arguably one of the most important figures in the development of modern automatic and semi-automatic firearms and is credited with 128 gun patents — his first (for a single shot rifle) was granted October 7, 1879.

One significant contribution is the pistol slide design, found on nearly every modern automatic handgun, developed in the 1890s and introduced on Colt and Fabrique Nationale (FN) pistols such as the M1911. He also developed the first gas-operated automatic machine gun, the Colt-Browning Model 1895 — a system that would surpass recoil - actuated in popularity. Other successful designs include the Browning .50 caliber machine gun, the Browning Automatic Rifle, and a ground-breaking semi-automatic shotgun, the Browning Auto-5.