Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video episode on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian, and I'm here today
at Rock Island Auction House. We're taking a look at some of the guns
in their 2014 December Premiere auction. Now this particular auction ... I looked
through the catalogue and I figured this would be an excellent opportunity to go through the
entire developmental history of the Colt 1911, because in this auction there's an
example of almost every single variant. So we've got them all laid out here,
and we're gonna start at the very earliest and move through the latest and see what's what. So the story of the 1911 really begins back in 1896. John Moses Browning patented four different
handgun mechanisms all at the same time, that were all approved in 1896. And ... one was a patent for a rotating barrel
gun that was never actually manufactured. One was a patent for basically a handgun
version of his 1895 gas lever machine gun. A prototype of that pistol was made,
but it never went into production. One of the patents became the FN Model 1900
straight blowback pistol, extremely popular in its day. And one of the patents was the tilting barrel
mechanism that would be used to become the 1911. So Browning made some examples of this gun, it seemed
like the most practical military gun of the four types of design. And in 1898 he sent an example to the US Ordnance Department
to try and get their interest in it as a military pistol. They were interested. He made some
improvements to the gun, and the first production model of the pistol was the Colt Model
1900, which we have an example of here. We'll bring the camera back, and we'll take a closer
look at each of these guns in a little more detail. Colt Automatic Pistol
aka
Model 1900 Sight Safety So the very first version here we call the Colt 1900,
although it's interesting that Colt never adopted this designation themselves. At the time this
was simply known as the Colt Automatic Pistol. It was the only Colt automatic pistol,
so it didn't really need a special name, and this was kind of brand new technology at the time. At any rate, several hundred of these were purchased by both
the US Army and the US Navy in a couple of different batches. Overall 4,200 or so of these were
manufactured between 1900 and 1902. What makes this version... Well, we can see there are a number
of major differences from today's 1911. The ... slide is longer, the grip
is shorter, the grip is deeper. The controls are completely different. You can see there's
no slide stop, there's no manual safety, there's no grip safety. There is in fact a safety, and
we'll get to that in just a moment. The calibre that these guns were chambered in
was the .38 ACP, or .38 Automatic Colt Pistol. This was a semi-rimmed 9mm or .38 calibre case
developed by Colt specifically for their automatic pistols. Now what makes this particularly interesting
(and particularly rare), is the safety. This is called a Sight Safety variant,
and all of the early 1900s were. Cock the hammer, and the safety is actually
the rear sight here. When I snap it down that physically blocks the firing pin
from moving forward and safes the pistol. At the same time you can see that the rear sight notch
is in the [safety], and when the safety is engaged you don't have a sight picture. When the safety
is disengaged then you do have a sight picture, albeit a little tiny one. Now this was the very first mechanism that Colt used for a
safety on these pistols, and it turns out it was not well liked. There're a couple problems with it. ... First
off, it was not particularly simple to deal with. If you have the gun in a shooting grip, it's ... a
little awkward to get to that safety to disengage it. It also, the way that it interacted with
the firing pin weakened the firing pin. Like the cutdout required in the firing pin was a problem, and firing pins on these Sight Safety
models have a tendency to break. So there are a number of other features
that US military personnel complained about. They complained that the grip was too short,
they thought the gun was too front heavy, they didn't like the fact that it wasn't really one
handed friendly. So you'll see if I rack the slide it does not stay open even though the magazine is empty.
There was no last round hold open on the Model 1900. So in order to reload the gun
you had to take the magazine out, (and this does have kind of an interesting
heel release, you actually push this lever forward, and you can then pull out the
magazine, this held 7 cartridges), but in order to reload the gun was a two-handed
operation, because you had to put the magazine in and then it took two hands to rack
the slide and chamber a new cartridge. Similarly, it really took two hands to operate the
safety, people didn't like that, the military didn't like that. Now in fact they didn't like it so much that not all of
the 1900s were actually manufactured with this safety. It didn't take that long before Colt realised it was
a commercial problem and started replacing them. Model 1902 Sporting
(this example converted from a 1900 Sight Safety) So the next version that was produced
was called the Colt Model 1902 Sporting. Originally this was just called the Model 1902. Colt started
calling it the 1902 Sporting after they introduced the 1902 Military model, just so they would have
a way to differentiate between the two guns. In practical terms the Model 1902
was really just a product improved 1900. Most of the features remain the exact same. One of the most significant changes
is they got rid of the sight safety and they replaced it with what we would recognise
today as a much more typical Colt 1911 style rear sight. Now some of the early 1900s were actually manufactured
with this sight towards the very end of production, and some of the original 1900s ... went back and
were retrofitted with this different style of rear sight. This is an example of a gun that has been retrofitted. This was originally manufactured with a sight safety, you can tell that because you can see there
is a pin right here that the safety pivots on. This pistol still has the hole for that pin. It's
been filled and it doesn't do anything anymore, but it has the sight safety hole. And then
it also has this pin which is to hold in place the new style of firing pin retaining plate. So this fixed one of the main
complaints about the 1900. The firing pin was much stronger once they did that,
it didn't have cutouts in it that would weaken it. So it's interesting to note that
on the 1902 Sporting model they've gotten rid of the sight safety, and they
didn't actually replace it with anything else. This model of pistol simply has
no manually operated safety at all. In total about 6,900 of the Model 1902 Sporting
pistols were made. That was between 1902 and 1907. ... It's interesting to note on a lot of these early
developmental versions they kept selling them well after they'd replaced them with newer
technology, which in retrospect isn't all that surprising. You know, the same thing
happens with all sorts of products, not everyone immediately goes out
and buys the newest and best version. Model 1902 Sporting
(new production as such) Now, this is a 1900 that was converted into
the Sporting style with the new rear sight. This guy is actually a new
production Model 1902 Sporting. We can see this has the round
hammer that was introduced. You'll find both round and spur
hammers on the 1902 Sporting, they used both until the
... spur hammers were all used up. You can also see the style of the slide serrations changed,
instead of being square flat cuts they're now angled cuts, like saw teeth almost, which give a little bit better
gripping surface. That was a military request that Colt put into effect on all
of the commercial pistols as well. Other than that, this is still basically just a product
improved model 1900. It retains the same round butt, has the same short grip frame and magazine,
pretty much everything else stayed the same. So at the same time that Colt was releasing this 1902 Sporting
model, which was done to try and get more commercial sale of basically the 1900 pistol that
they already had tooling for, they were also making an adapted version
to satisfy some of the military complaints. So they were running production of the 1902
Sporting and the 1902 Military at the same time. Disassembly and Functioning
(covers all models from the 1900 to the 1908) Here's our slide.
[Model 1902 Military] ... This is a very important piece
that we will discuss in a moment. What's interesting mechanically about the early
versions of the Colt is that instead of having one barrel hinge pin and a barrel bushing,
which is what we're used to today, they actually pivoted the barrel in
two places, at both of these pins. There are two links, and the barrel goes
down and backward, up and forward, down and backward. So when you fire
the pistol (this is still a short recoil action), the slide moves backward.
And as the slide starts to move, it pulls the barrel with it, and as the
barrel starts to travel it also starts to drop. Once it travels far enough, it drops
down enough that these locking lugs are completely out of the locking recesses in the
slide, up here. At that point the barrel stops moving. Obviously it's pinned in place.
The slide continues to move back, ejects the empty round, and then cycles forward
under spring pressure and chambers a new round. The ... recoil spring for the Model 1900 and 1902, and actually all the way through up until about
1908, the recoil spring is here underneath the barrel. ... The major mechanical safety
issue with these pistols, and this is something that one
needs to be aware of if you shoot them, because overpressure ammunition can
cause a serious problem with these guns. So the slide actually disassembles from the rear. So the slide on these guns comes off to the rear. The only thing that holds it in
place is this little locking block. This runs through here,
and this is what ensures that the recoil spring is acting on the slide. So if you shoot really hot ammunition
and you break this locking piece, the slide will actually recoil straight off the back
of the gun and potentially into your face. Bad thing. This was acknowledged, this was an understood problem
that Colt got around to dealing with a little later on. However, we'll go ahead and put this one back together
and take a look at the details of the Military model. You can see there is a plunger
in the front that I can push in, that pushes on the recoil spring. That is for assembly and disassembly. Once I have the slide in place, all I need to do to reassemble the gun is
use this plunger to put pressure on the spring... and use that to depress the spring. That locking
wedge drops right in, and when I release the spring that now ensures that the
recoil spring acts on the slide. So actually very simple to disassemble. Model 1902 Military So this is an example of the Model
1902 Military version of the Colt pistol. These were produced, believe it or not, starting
in 1902 and then all the way up through 1928. And in total about 18,000 of them were made.
So several times as many as the Sporting model. This addressed a lot of the military's complaints. For one thing the grip frame has been lengthened, the magazine capacity was increased from 7 to 8.
If we take a look at this compared to the 1902 Sporting, you'll see the addition in the grip there. In addition to this, the Military model came with a lanyard ring and loop.
And as a result the butt of the gun is squared off instead of being rounded. Between this being squared off
and the entire thing being lengthened, These had a ... significantly longer grip,
are definitely better to fit in the hand. They still have a rather awkward overly vertical grip angle,
and that's something Colt would address later on, not quite yet. The slide serrations were moved to the
rear of the slide at the request of the military. We have the first actual control on the gun,
other than the sight safety, that is a slide release. So on these, when the magazine is
empty, the slide does actually lock back and then the shooter, being right-handed,
can drop the slide with their firing thumb. The 1902 military is still chambered
in the .38 ACP cartridge. When these were tested by the
military they did really extremely well. These went through what was at the time
a fairly standard 6,000 round endurance test. The guns were allowed to cool every 100 rounds,
and they were cleaned every 1,000 rounds. The 1902 Military went through the 6,000 round endurance
test with no failures of any kind, which is really quite impressive. One of the main problems at this point was that the
military wasn't sure that they were comfortable with a .38. Right around this time, the very early 1900s, there was a test done by two
officers named Thompson and LaGarde. ... They did some cadaver testing with
cartridges, and they came to the conclusion that the military really needed a cartridge
of at least .41 calibre, preferably .45 calibre. Now Thompson had some pretty intimate connections with
the Colt company, and it seems very likely that he tipped them off to let them know that the Army was going to be
changing its requirements to require a .45 calibre pistol, Colt went and started developing the .45 ACP
not long after this gun went into production, knowing that the military was going to
be requesting something a little bit bigger. So, while they were working on that
they also wanted to try and maintain good commercial sales of this pistol that
they had put so much development work into. So they simultaneously also started
working on the Model 1903 Pocket Hammer specifically for the commercial market.
So that's the next gun we're going to take a look at. Model 1903 Pocket Hammer
(so named to distinguish it from the
1903 Pocket Hammerless) While they were working on the development
of a .45 calibre pistol for military requirements, Colt was also trying to ensure good commercial sales. This is the 1903, what was called the Pocket Hammer to distinguish it from the 1903 Pocket Hammerless which was a plain blowback
design also being marketed at the time. In fact, the 1903 Pocket Hammerless is one of Colt's extremely successful pistols with
more than a half a million produced. The Pocket Hammer wasn't as successful, but it's an
important developmental step in the story of the 1911. So this is basically still a Model 1902
with a couple of slight improvements. The slide serrations have been moved to the back. And the barrel and slide have been
shortened by about an inch and a half. It retains the same 7 round magazine, we
have the same magazine release system. There's the mag. This pistol still has no controls on it, has no manual safety, has no
slide stop. It does not lock open on the last cartridge. And this was intended for the
commercial market, thinking that people would be a little more apt to buy a
slightly more compact version of the pistol, and that was true, Colt played that one right.
About 31,000 of these pistols were made. They were actually in production until 1928, and there
was still some stock being sold off until 1930 of these. Up to this point, this was the most commercially
successful of all the Colt automatic pistols of this type. Now you'll see this one has a spur
hammer. As with some of the other models you'll find these with both spur
hammers and rounded hammers like this. Now developmentally this is a bit of a dead end. Colt put this on the market and then they immediately went
back to working on trying to get the military contract. So, I do want to point out the finish
on this is very impressively intact. And it's a good example of
just this absolutely gorgeous, dark blue glossy finish that Colt put on virtually
all of these early pistols, they all have this. Unfortunately it's a fairly delicate finish, and
it hasn't survived well on most of the guns, but absolutely fantastic looking. Model 1905 This marks a major turning point in this family of pistols,
because it is the first of them to feature the .45 ACP cartridge. By this time the Thompson-LaGarde
tests were public knowledge, and the Army had formally requested a .45 calibre
pistol. And this was basically Colt's response. It has most of the models [features] of the 1902
Military, you can see it has the same squared off grip. Has the same grip angle still,
they haven't changed that yet. The magazine length is the same as the 1902 Military,
although instead of holding 8 cartridges it now only holds 7 because they're the larger .45 calibre cartridges. You'll find these with both rounded and spur hammers.
Colt went back and forth on all of these models, pretty much. Now you can see the two pins here and
mechanically this is the same mechanism as went back all the way to the Model 1900. It has two swinging links
that lock the barrel in position. So the barrel drops down in a linear fashion,
it doesn't tilt like the final 1911 design did. However, we do have the slide stop back in place. So when this pistol is empty it does lock open. We still have the original early version of the magazine release
where you pull this lever forward to remove the magazine. And it still doesn't have any sort of manual safety,
doesn't have a grip safety, none of that's been added yet. Now the 1905, a few of these
were sent to the Army as samples. Ultimately a batch of 200 of what was considered
the Model 1907 were sent to the Army for formal trials. Those 1907s were never made commercially,
but the 1905 was made commercially. In total about 6,100 of these were
manufactured between 1905 and about 1913. So not one of the more successful guns. Of course at the time .45 ACP was a
brand-new, untested, proprietary cartridge really. Colt marketed these, humorously, with the tagline
"The Most Powerful Small Arm Ever Invented", which is baloney, frankly. Even at the time
there were more powerful pistols out there. But what can I say? I guess the marketing
department got ahold of the design. Savage 1907 in .45 ACP So this pistol is basically identical to
what the US Army ended up testing in 1907. They requested the guns in 1906,
they actually did the test in 1907. And this was again to determine a new
service pistol for the United States military. Now there were a whole bunch of competitors.
Colt ended up being one of the leading ones. One of the other leading competitors
was actually the Savage company, which had produced a version of its Model
1907 .32 automatic pistol scaled up for .45 ACP. One of the other competitors, of course, was the Luger. A
couple of sample Lugers were made in .45 calibre for these tests. And after the testing, the result was
basically Colt was the best performing pistol. Savage was number three,
and Luger was number two. And basically the Ordnance Department wanted ... to give the companies some time to improve their guns, and they wanted to have
a runoff test between the best two competitors. So they requested 200 more pistols from Colt
and 200 from Luger, or from DWM - Luger pistols, in order to do more extended
field trials. Colt said, "That's great." Luger turned down the request, at the time
they had a bunch of other contracts in the works and the idea of retooling to do a couple
hundred guns in .45 for the US Army (which at the time was a pretty small, not a particularly
significant military force in world perspective), it just wasn't worth it to them, so
they turned down the opportunity. The Ordnance Department then turned to the
Savage company, they'd come in number three. Well, if Luger didn't want to continue in the
trials they'd offer the opportunity to Savage. Savage was perfectly happy to provide 200 more guns. And this is an example of one of those. Savage made a rotating barrel
automatic pistol. This is a little bit out of context for our our video here on the 1911, but there
are two of these available in this December auction. And they're a gun you really don't get to see very often,
so I thought we'd pull this one out to take a look at. This was really the main competitor to the Colt. So there was a chance for a while that this gun would
be adopted instead of the Colt as the new US Army pistol. As it turned out, the Colt was
chosen and it's a good choice. I fired one of these guns and it is
definitely not as good as the 1911. It's a lot more obscure, of course, because it didn't go into
production. But the Army made the right choice on this one. Model 1907
Model 1909
Model 1910 Alright, so there are a couple of guns
that are missing from this lineup here. And they're right at the end of the developmental
cycle. So the first one is the Model 1907, these are the guns that were actually
put into the later US military trial. They are basically identical to 1905s with the difference that
they had added a grip safety at the request of the military. We're also missing the Model 1909. That is the first model that was done with the single
link tilting barrel instead of the parallel two link dropping barrel mechanism. And that was also produced in extremely small numbers,
about two dozen of those were made, again only for military trials. They were never sold commercially. And then lastly the Model 1910
which was the final gun developed before the 1911 obviously. The Model 1910 is the gun in which the grip
angle was changed from the rather straight early version to what we are more
familiar with today on the Model 1911. Now that Model 1910 also went through a standard
6,000 round endurance test with the military. And it actually had quite a few problems, a lot
of the parts in them weren't properly hardened, and the barrel locking lugs had been cut a
little bit deeper than they should have been. And ultimately the gun cracked the frame and also
cracked the barrel, which is a fairly catastrophic problem. The guns were sent back to
Colt for a little bit of improvement. They changed the design of locking lugs
and changed a few details in the frame, and when they came back with
what was in fact the Model 1911. That gun went through another 6,000 round
endurance test and ... this time it performed flawlessly. It had no failures of any sort whatsoever. While the Savage, its competition at the time, at that
point the Savages had been upgraded by the factory, the Savage factory, to address a few
of their problems. Even that last test Savage was still suffering
malfunctions and parts breakages, and at that point the Army made
the final decision to adopt the Colt. So, it was this exact version of the gun, the
Model 1911, that was adopted at that point and became the US official Army service
pistol, kind of just in time for World War One. So let's take a closer look at this guy. Model 1911 Alright, now at long last we
actually get to the Model of 1911. By this point, of course, we have pretty much all
the features that you know and recognise today. ... The grip angle has been changed.
The grip safety has been added. A manual safety has been added. Our slide stop
has been changed to the more modern version. The magazine release has been moved
to a thumb button instead of a heel clip. Now this is a pre-World War One manufactured
gun, it probably saw service in World War One. I really like the guns that have all this good
honest wear on them, I just get a kick out of that, and so that's why I picked this
particular 1911 to take a look at. Now the features of the 1911 are primarily
interesting when we compare them to the 1911A1, because mechanically this
gun is in its final configuration. Of course, ... the main mechanical change from
all of the earlier versions is that this now has a tilting barrel, it has a single pivot
pin here and a barrel bushing up front. So the barrel actually tilts
down like this when you fire, instead of coming straight back
and dropping down like the early guns. This of course was the standard US military pistol through World War One and World War Two and Korea and Vietnam and all the
way up to the adoption of the Beretta. However, ... they didn't survive
all that long in this exact form. Model 1911A1 In 1924 some changes were adopted that turned
this from the Model 1911 to the Model 1911A1. The A1, of course, being a standard military term
for an upgrade that isn't a completely new item. So the ones that are easiest to point out: The
mainspring housing on the back here went from flat on the 1911 to arched on the 1911A1, this has
the effect of further sharpening the grip angle which makes the gun a little more comfortable
for most people, the military certainly preferred it. The grip safety was extended. You can see it comes
farther out, does a better job of protecting your hand. There were scallops added at the back of the trigger
guard on the A1. Makes for a little bit easier trigger reach. In addition the trigger itself was shortened
and the face of the trigger was checkered. So you can see, on the 1911 here
we have a longer and smooth trigger, and on the 1911A1, the trigger is shorter and the
face is checkered, gives you a little better grip on it. In addition, the sights were changed. I have the 1911 on the left here, you
can see it has a smaller rounded sight. The 1911A1 on the right has a wider rear sight.
Sight picture didn't change all that much, they didn't really change the notch, but they did use a
wider sight which does aid in acquiring the sight picture. Model 1924 Transitional
(not a formal designation) Now, the one other version we should
take a look at while we have these here, is a fairly rare variant generally known as a 1924 Transitional gun. Of course 1924 is the year
that the A1 variant was adopted, and what they did at that point is they
still had a lot of parts, particularly slides, from the original 1911 production that
they didn't want to just throw those out. So for a short time they were using a mixture of parts. You can see this has a grip safety
from an A1, it has the scalloped trigger guard cuts, it has the
arched mainspring housing. It does actually have the wider rear sight, but
the slide is still marked Model of 1911, US Army. Just like this Model 1911. Whereas on the A1, they're actually marked A1. So transitional guns are fairly rare, but
they're an interesting little side note historically, and of course one or two of
them are available in this auction. So I figured we should pull that
out and show that to you as well. So I hope you guys learned something
about the development of the 1911. I hope you enjoyed watching the video.
Of course, this is an auction house. Like I said, all of these pistols on the table here, and many more,
are available for sale in Rock Island's December auction. So I've got links to each one
of these guns in the text below. You can go there and take a look at Rock
Island's catalogue descriptions and photos, and place bids if you're interested in
adding any of these to your collection. There are of course multiple examples
of each of these models in the auction, so take some time to browse through the
catalogue and I don't think you'll be disappointed. Thanks for watching.
Dem longslides doe
I’ve seen one of those pre-1911 models in person at a gun show, in a case full of old 1911s and 1903 hammerless.
Gorgeous pistols. Brb; need to buy another!