German Frank Clarke/Edwin Anson equivalents?

[ptdunk]

Hi all,
are there any German equivalents to Edwin Anson and Frank Clarke as far as air pistol development goes?

I can only think of the duo at Feinwerkbau or Fritz Bethelmws & son at F.B Record.

Any other individuals known from Walther or Diana who were instrumental in air pistols design?

Cheers,
Matt

[Lakey]

Schmeisser at Haenel could be a candidate perhaps

[Garvin]

Kurt Giss springs to mind (pun intended) Matt. Or Jacob Mayer himself.

[Geezer]

FWB was founded by Westinger and Altenburger, but the credit for the sledge design was shared three ways with Edwin Woehrstein, who I believe was an employee of theirs.

Westinger was definitely at Mauser pre-WW2, working on cartridge pistols, including minor improvements to the “broomhandle”. I think Altenburger was at Mauser too.

[Geezer]

I would like to know who at M&G designed the original (no pun intended) Diana LP5.

Hardly a ground-breaking design, but an important one: a popular pre-WW2 pistol; resurrected with changes post war; adapted into the LP6, the first recoilless pistol; and still lives on in the current LP8 (assuming M&G still make that following their recent love affair with rebranded Chinese stuff) and clearly the inspiration, scaled down, for the ubiquitous rubbish Chinese S2 and its many rubbish variants.

[ccdjg]

I would like to know who at M&G designed the original (no pun intended) Diana LP5.

Hardly a ground-breaking design, but an important one: a popular pre-WW2 pistol; resurrected with changes post war; adapted into the LP6, the first recoilless pistol; and still lives on in the current LP8 (assuming M&G still make that following their recent love affair with rebranded Chinese stuff) and clearly the inspiration, scaled down, for the ubiquitous rubbish Chinese S2 and its many rubbish variants.

The German patent for 1931 shows that the "inventors" were brothers Edwin and Rudolf Mayer, who took over the MGR company from their father in the 1920's. The general design, was as you say not exactly ground breaking, and you could regard it as a streamlining and modernising of the MGR Model 8 pistol that their father Jakob Mayer introduced in 1910. Even that pistol was a simple derivative of other breakbarrel pistols of the period and so was not patented. The Mayer brothers tried to patent their pistol in Britain in 1932, but the application was rejected, presumably because of lack of novelty. Even so, as you rightly say, the general appearance was copied in many subsequent models, probably copied more than any other design, with the exception of the "gat" type pistols.

[ccdjg]

Schmeisser at Haenel could be a candidate perhaps

Yes, Hugo Schmeisser would be a definite contender IMO. Truly inventive geniuses (genii?), like Clarke and Anson, have the ability to think laterally and to find solutions to problems that are simple,but totally non-obvious to the rest of us until pointed out. To cite just two simple examples from the his huge repertoire (at least 11 airgun patents between 1925 and 1941), there was the repeater mechanism of the Haenel 28R pistol, where he located the magazine inside the air chamber, using Anson's concentric piston concept in a completely unexpected way, and there was the simple lever system of the Haenel 100 pistol, which was able to convert his direct-pull Haenel 50 into a lever-cocked pistol with virtually no additional machining costs other than adding two metal links and a strategically placed pivot point.:




.

[Geezer]

Not quite German (American-Hungarian), but I think Andrew Laszlo/Lawrence deserves some recognition for the Hy Score.

[Geezer]

The German patent for 1931 shows that the "inventors" were brothers Edwin and Rudolf Mayer, who took over the MGR company from their father in the 1920's. The general design, was as you say not exactly ground breaking, and you could regard it as a streamlining and modernising of the MGR Model 8 pistol that their father Jakob Mayer introduced in 1910. Even that pistol was a simple derivative of other breakbarrel pistols of the period and so was not patented. The Mayer brothers tried to patent their pistol in Britain in 1932, but the application was rejected, presumably because of lack of novelty. Even so, as you rightly say, the general appearance was copied in many subsequent models, probably copied more than any other design, with the exception of the "gat" type pistols.

Interesting, thanks. As you say, there’s nothing new in the design, so a bit surprising it got a patent of any kind.

[ptdunk]

Very interesting, thanks guys.

I agree Hugo Schmeisser is probably the closest in terms of sheer wide ranging inventiveness, (when I took my ‘33 apart I couldn’t believe how clever that repeating mechanism is)
…and then there are a few individuals scattered about who made singular breakthroughs.

Interesting that many had a history of working for the big firearms companies.
I think Fritz Bethelmes worked for Walther and worked on the P38.

Does anyone know who at Walther invented the single stroke pneumatic system on the LP2 & LP3? That paved the way for lots of interesting SSP pistols and rifles.



Cheers,
Matt