Andrew Burgess’ Automatic Pistol

Andrew Burgess was a photographer and prolific firearms designer best known for his short-lived lever action rifle, the Colt Burgess and his later ingenious folding shotgun. 

While his designs were taken up by Colt, Marlin and Whitney, Burgess eventually established his own manufacturing company in 1892. The Burgess Gun Company produced Burgess’ slide action rifles and shotguns and his folding shotgun. 

In 1896, he filed a patent for a new ‘automatic gun’, a pistol using a gas operated, piston-driven action which fed from a short tub magazine beneath the barrel. It locked using a pivoting lever acted on by the operating rod. 

Burgess’ patent describes the purpose of his design as “to produce an automatic gun in which the breech mechanism shall be operated by pressure developed in the bore of the gun on firing.”

The pistol was gas operated with a piston located on the side of the pistol, between the barrel and tube magazine, the piston was acted on by gas which left the barrel by a vent. This pushed the piston forward and acted on an operating rod which opened the gun’s breech. The breech was then closed by a return spring which acted on the operating rod. 

The weapon could be cocked and open the breech using a small lever on the right side of the pistol, marked X in fig.12, another lever Y could cock the hammer without opening the breech. there appears to be no safety, other than a half-cock position with lever Y.

The weapon’s locking mechanism relied on a locking lever which acted to hold the breech block in battery. The locking lever or ‘operating lever’ as Burgess referred to it, was pivoted on a transverse screw. Once the operating rod acted on the lever it pivoted backwards, unlocking the breech, camming the firing pin back, re-cocking it, and allowing the breech block to travel to the rear. It also operated the carrier which raised cartridges up from the magazine into the action. 

The patent was granted in October 1899, by which time Burgess had sold his company to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, as such the patent is assigned to Winchester. Burgess’ patent is one of the earlier automatic pistol designs and while not as practical as say John Browning’s first prototypes patented in 1897 or the contemporary Mauser or Bergmann design, it is still a competent and interesting design.

The gas operated principle Burgess patented was used in designs before and after, equally his patented system would have worked equally well in a rifle, although the proposed locking action would not. The use of a tube magazine by 1896, was somewhat antiquated and the pistol’s mechanics complex but Burgess was undoubtedly a talented and forward thinking designer. He died in December 1908, at the age of 71.

Sources:

‘Automatic Gun’, A. Burgess, US Patent #636,196, 31 Oct. 1899 (source)

Pioneer Photographers from the Mississippi to the Continental Divide, P.E. Palmquist & T.R. Kailbourn (2005)

Biography: Andrew Burgess, Forgotten Weapons, R. White, (source)

A Model 1910 Belgian Automatic Pistol, firing a 7.65mm/.32 ACP cartridge, manufactured at the Fabrique Nationale D’Armes de Guerre arsenal, Herstal, Belgium.

It was thought that Gavrilo Princip used this same pistol on June 28, 1914, however in the early 2000s, the actual assasination pistol was recovered and placed in the Austrian Military Museum and it was revealed to be the same Model 1910 from the same arsenal but used the  9mm/.380 ACP cartridge instead.

For the assasination, four model 1910s were bought at an arms store in Belgrade, Serbia and distributed to the conspirators, none of whom had actually fired a pistol before. (Which probably partially accounted for how truly botched the assasination was.)

Makarov Torture Test -  Military Arms Channel

pew pew i don’t draw guns often but i got a pretty good idea of making one up on the fly teehee