Winchester Repeating Arms Company

The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a prominent American maker of repeating weapons during the late 19th Century and the early 20th Century.

20th Century Developments

The World Wars

The company later bought and manufactured several of John Browning's highly superior rifle and shotgun designs and was a major producer of M1917 Enfield military rifles during World War I. Working at the Winchester plant during that war, Browning developed the final design of the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), of which it produced some 27,000. Browning and the Winchester engineers also developed the Browning .50 caliber (12.7 x 99 mm) machine gun during the war. The caliber .50 (12.7 x 99 mm) ammunition for it was designed by the Winchester ballistic engineers.

Related Topics:
John Browning - Browning Automatic Rifle

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The commercial rights to these new Browning guns were owned by Colt's. In 1931 the Winchester firm was purchased by the Olin Corporation and continued its production of civilian rifles and shotguns. The U.S. M1 carbine (although not a carbine in the truest sense) was designed by Winchester engineers Clifford Warner and Ralph Clarkson (contrary to a widely published myth, not by D.M. Williams) and was then manufactured in large numbers by Winchester and other firms. During World War II Winchester was the sole civilian producer of the M1 rifle and later was the first civilian manufacturer of the M14 rifle.

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The Cold War and Beyond

In the mid 1950's S. K. Janson formed a new Winchester design group to advance the use of modern engineering design methods and manufacturing principles in gun design. The result was a new line of guns which replaced most of the older products. Olin later sold off Winchester's firearms manufacturing business, retaining the ammunition business. Winchester guns are today made by the U.S. Repeating Arms Company.

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