User:Masculan/sandbox

History
Paul Mauser, and his brother, Wilhelm came from a humble family of 13 children,located in the village of Obendorf, on the Neckar River, in Wuerttenberg. Although Paul was 4 years older than Wilhelm, it was Paul who performed the bulk small arms development and to whom most Mauser inventions are credited. This was due partly to the early death of Wilhelm and his chief role of sales and business manager. Paul was drafted in 1859 as an artilleryman at the arsenal in Ludwigsburg. He became familiar with the new breech-loading guns there, and returned at the end of the year to Obendorf, where he developed a small breech-loading cannon. After that, he realized that there was greater opportunity in the area o small arms. In december 1866 he submited a turn-bolt needle fire gun, based on the design of Eduard Linder, an american, with its firing needle positioned vertically under the barrel. The design was submited to the Wuerttenberg War Ministry, but was not adopted. A later Mauser needle rifle had the firing needle coaxial with the bore, with cocking done automatically by operating the bolt. A second version had a firing pin, and used rear ignition cartidges. In spite of this changes, the Wuerttenberg War Ministry did not adopt it, because it was satisfied with its Minie muzzle-loader. The Mauser rilfe was liked by the Austrian War Ministry, who didnt't adopt it, but who showed the rifle to Samuel Norris, a European agent for the American firm of Remington.

Norris wanted to use the features of the Mauser rifle for converting the french Chassepout needle gun to a metallic-cartrige rifle. He therefore made a partership contract with the Mauser brothers, which specified that Norris would provide the necessary funding, and the Mauser brothers the technical development work. The product of this partenrship was the Mauser-Norris Model 67/69 rilfe, witch was an improved version of the previos bolt-action rifle

Paul Mauser developed his bolt-action rifle from 1867 to 1871. During 1870–71 trials with many different rifles took place, with the "M1869 Bavarian Werder" being the Mausers' chief competitor. The Mauser was provisionally adopted on 2 December 1871, pending the development of an appropriate safety. With support from the government's Spandau arsenal, the improvements to the safety mechanism were completed and the rifle was formally accepted on 14 February 1872 as Infantry Rifle Model 1871 by the German Empire excluding Bavaria. General issue to troops began in late 1873 and all units had been converted by the spring of 1875. The Mauser 1871 was replaced by the magazine-fed, smokeless powder using Gewehr 1888 from 1888 through 1890.