Ebets Pistols: just one step behind Browning!
Ebets pistol mod. 1897 Quite modern for that year and even user-friendly pistol. It is possible that the jumping lever on the pistol would have interfered with the shooter, but ... the levers folding on the "parabellum" hindered him even more, and nothing ...
The Book of the Prophet Ecclesiastes 1:10
History firearms weapons. Today we continue our story about pistols from the last decade of the XNUMXth century. Then the situation was like a breakthrough of a reservoir dam: inventions in the field of military equipment and firearms in particular poured out in a real stream. A lot of different automatic pistols appeared. Well - the time has come, the designers "took the bull by the horns" and began to create designs of pistols, one more surprising than the other. Sometimes creating constructions that were much ahead of their time. But ... if their weapons were not accepted by the military or did not find wide commercial sales, then the memory of them remained the lot of only specialists. One of these gunsmiths was K.J. Ebets - the creator of one of the world's first pistols with automatic equipment that works by exhausting gases from the barrel.
Carl George Ebets
Ebets was born in Germany in May 1845, went to school in Hamburg. There, in Hamburg, he studied at the Jessen Polytechnic School. Then in 1864-1867. was engaged in barrel production at the Krupp enterprise in Essen, and at the same time studied in Karlsruhe, at the local higher technical school. In 1868, Ebets, like many talented and intelligent Europeans, moved to America. Here in the United States, he first worked as a "technical draftsman" for Pratt & Whitney and then moved to Colt Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut. Samuel Colt himself had already died by this time, and the company was going through far from its best times.
One of Ebets' patents: 1884 swing-away revolver.
How Ebets got the job as head of the firm's design department is unknown. Little is known about him in general, since even in the archives of the Colt company there are very few materials about his work, although there are documents signed by him in this position.
And then it happened that two Browning brothers came to his department and offered ... a machine gun that works by removing gases from the bore. Actually, at first, a rifle with a rate of fire of 15 rounds per minute was proposed, the reloading of which was due to the movement of the lever, on which the powder gases were pressed, and that, in turn, moved the bolt. The unusual design reached the stage of patenting by the Colt firm already on January 6, 1890, but then he prepared several proposals for improving its design and converting the rifle into a machine gun! There is an entry in Ebets' diary:
That is, it is obvious that this automation system was born from another attempt to bypass Maxim's patents, and this promised substantial profits if the business was successful.
Ebets pistol 1894
The new model of the machine gun fired 45-70 caliber US Army cartridges with a charge of black powder, however, the rate of fire on it was also brought to 400 rounds per minute. A patent application was filed on August 3, 1891, with the US Patent Office in Washington. Then it was protected by three more patents, and that's how, as a result, the machine gun "Colt model 1895" was born, firing cartridges .30-40 "Krag" and "6-mm Lee Navey". He was immediately sent "to practice" to fight in Cuba in 1895 and suppress the "boxers" in China in 1900. And everywhere he showed himself well and was accepted by the military, but he received the characteristic nickname "potato digger" its barrel had articulated levers, which resembled by their action similar devices on machines for harvesting potatoes. In total, from 1892 to 1927, Browning received a total of 19 patents for his machine guns, and Karl J. Ebets actively assisted him in this work, first as the direct head of the design department, and then as an experienced adviser in the field of patent affairs.
Schematic of the Ebets pistol of 1894 from the patent of 1896. First impression: the pistol was very long and poorly balanced. Keeping him pointed at the target would be quite difficult.
So the first meeting of Ebets and Browning took place back in May 1891, and then they not only worked together, but also became friends. Well, it is obvious that communication with Browning prompted Ebets himself to try his hand at creating weapons. Moreover, he was clearly impressed by the success of the gas-operated automatics of the machine gun he created. And around 1893, Karl Ebets himself began to develop a pistol with the same automatic drive, which he completed in the fall of 1894.
Schematic of the Ebets pistol of 1894 from the patent of 1896. In the top view, the barrel and the bolt, at the bottom - the gas vent mechanism
The pistol turned out to be extremely unusual and not like other samples. Like many other pistols of the 90s, it had a magazine in front of the trigger guard and was fed from a pack of cartridges. The pack was filled with five rounds, but the sixth could be loaded into the barrel. The automatics of the pistol worked like this: the powder gases entered the barrel when fired through the inclined bottom hole, the gases pressed on the end of the piston and pushed it back. The piston pulled the trigger back, and he got up on a combat platoon, and meanwhile, inside the shutter block, a special rod turned along a spiral groove and thereby forced the shutter to rotate. At the same time, he disengaged from the barrel, and the sleeve pressed on the bolt, and he retreated. At the same time, the spent cartridge case was extracted, and when the bolt returned by the force of the spring, it sent a new cartridge into the chamber.
Schematic of the Ebets pistol of 1894 from the patent of 1896. The device of the trigger mechanism and the gas chamber
Thus, the gas venting mechanism had nothing to do with the action of the shutter. He controlled only the device for locking it, which allowed the use of sufficiently powerful cartridges.
Schematic of the Ebets pistol of 1894 from the patent of 1896. The operation of the shutter and the ammunition feed mechanism
It is not known whether John Browning knew about Ebets' design or whether he himself thought of using the principle of his machine gun to create a pistol, but in the same fall of 1894, just when Ebets presented his pistol, Browning also began working on the creation of an automatic pistol with a gas-operated automatic mechanism. ... At the beginning of 1895 the pistol was ready and on July 3 it was tested at the company's shooting range. But Ebets also began work on a new pistol for the gas system, and it turned out that they received patents for their pistols almost simultaneously, namely in 1897!
Exterior view of Ebets pistol from 1897 patent
The second Ebets pistol, most likely, was made back in 1895 in the workshops of the department of new developments of the Colt company under the personal supervision of its creator, and it was very much, one might say - strikingly different from the first!
Ebets pistol. Diagram from a patent of 1897. The locking lever is folded back, the barrel is pushed forward
This Ebets pistol differed from the previous one by the presence of a direct-acting gas valve on the pivot assembly, which actuated the longitudinally moving barrel and squeezed the powerful coiled return spring underneath. The gas outlet on the barrel was located on the top of the barrel approximately in the middle of its length. Powder gases coming out of the hole acted on the poppet tip of the locking lever, which then folded up and back, while pushing the barrel forward. The tip itself had two washers on the sides, for which the lever could be lifted up by hands and thereby cock the bolt of this pistol. Although it would be more correct to say - not the bolt, but the barrel, because the reloading of this pistol, like the Mannlicher pistol of 1894, was due to the movement of the barrel itself. The ammunition was of a revolving type, and in the same way as that of Mannlicher, the trigger itself operated.
Diagram of the Ebets pistol device from the 1897 patent
The store was in the handle, but had a specific device, again with the aim of circumventing the patent of the Remington Arms company.
Top view of the pistol during its operation. Diagram from a patent of 1897
The Ebets pistol was quite well developed and could well become a model for mass production. But when John M. Browning offered the company several of his pistols at once, Ebets, as a specialist, immediately appreciated the economic potential hidden in them and ... became a good assistant to him.
Browning's patent for a pistol arr. 1897. Unlike Ebets' pistol, his barrel is motionless, but the bolt moves back!
As a result, his work contributed to the appearance of the serial model "Colt-Browning 1900", and the conquest of the company in technical and economic terms of such a favorable position that it began to occupy one of the leading places in the world in the number of small arms produced, and especially pistols. Well, Karl J. Ebets himself died on July 19, 1925 in a hospital in the city of Hartford. Yes, he didn't create his own pistol to go into production. I tried, he succeeded, however, he had enough wisdom to make way for a more worthy one and not interfere with him (and this happens and often!), But to help!
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