The Gun That Won the West
Winchester, Browning, Ruger, Remington, and Mossberg. To some people these names might mean nothing. To others these might be the name of their first or favorite gun. For those that do not recognize these names, they are the names of famous rifle companies. A few of them were founded before the Civil War, and the rest were founded a little before or after World War II. Although he has a rifle company named after him, Oliver Fisher Winchester was not an inventor; he merely improved, manufactured, and sold rifles that others, such as John Browning and Benjamin Henry, created.
Oliver Fisher Winchester was born in 1810. His parents were Samuel and Hannah Winchester. He grew up in Boston with his brother, Samuel, and his sister, Mary Ann, in an impoverished family. As a young adult, he got an apprenticeship under a carpenter. He
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"Benjamin Tyler Henry, Winchester's factory superintendent, designed and patented the lever action Henry repeating rifle and its self-contained metallic cartridge in 1860" (Britannica.com). Henry invented a rifle that he named after himself. Benjamin Henry also came very close to perfecting the metal rimfire cartridge. This ammunition was more powerful than the old ammunition, which were just self-contained cartridges and could not shoot as fast or far. “The new Henry cartridge of .44 caliber propelled a 216-grain bullet at 1200 feet per second” (Kirkland 6). To give you an idea of that caliber using everyday objects, here is an example. 216 grains is about 15 grams, which is about the mass of a common CD. Commercial airplanes generally travel at about 500-600 miles per hour. 1,200 feet per second is 820 miles per hour. So this caliber, in 1857, could shoot a bullet with the mass of a CD faster than commercial planes fly today. Benjamin Henry was ahead of his time and he made a huge impact on the Winchester Repeating Arms