That's a great story!Somewhere I ran across mention of this with the claim that Browning did it on a bet that he could make the rifle full auto in the space of eight hours.
Interesting post, that fills in a few details about the "flapper" rifle. Unspellable's story about it being done in a day must be right then.John M Brownings first gas operated machine gun. 45-70. For testing only. 1890-91View attachment 1071252
Well, we don't have the muzzle flapper type in action, but there are still a few of the old M1895s in working order:We need a video of this in action
Is your book part of Americas Premier Gunmakers book set? My book tells the same story.I've got an out of print Biography. The story goes, he and his brothers were at a shooting match when John saw the muzzle blast move blades of grass. To the chagrin of his brothers they headed back to the shop. There he bored a hole through a piece of wood and asked if anyone knew what would happen when he shot through that hole? John said "it will go hell-winding." He did, it did, then he headed to the forge to make the Flapper. If it was a comment about a bet it was probably attributed to one of his brothers. A lot of good stories in that book and I really need to visit Ogdon sometime.
Maxim had a lot of patents unrelated to his recoil operated machine gun. Ian did a episode on the Potato digger and Maxim.Maxim's machine gun was recoil operated. Don't know what Hotchkiss was up to.