I should have got the LJ one. has l have an original patent specification for it.
I should have got the LJ one. has l have an original patent specification for it.
Fascinating to see those prototypes. Especially the Hy Score. It changed so radically before being put into production.
The use of the term prototype is a bit open. There may be the concept by the inventor and truly homemade in his, or her, workshop. This may look nothing like the eventual production item and just simply made to see if a development works. The inventor may have little or no machinery or the skills to use them. Thats why so many look really crude and unfinished. The inventor then touts it around to find a potential firm willing to take it on. If he is lucky the following happens.
More prototypes are made of a more professional nature by the interested party to evaluate the invention. Those are then developed into the pre production variety of prototype. These are usually made by a manufacturer in house for testing purposes, sorting out gremlins, making changes to suit mass production and to demonstrate to the trade at exhibitions etc prior to launch. Usually no more than 10 or 12 examples are made and are usually recognised as genuine factory prototypes.
Good point, when is a prototype not a prototype? I suppose you could say that if it has all the main structural features of the final commercial product, it is a prototype, and if it still lacks key features, then it is an experimental prototype. So in the Hy-Score development story, pistol (C) would be an experimental prototype and (D) would be a prototype for the final Hy-Score (minus the breech cap unfortunately.)
Well Ed, I would say it is a Philips screw, and Andrew Laszlo obviously liked to use them as there is one on this other prototype.
Unfortunately the pictures Robert Beeman sent me were fairly low resolution, so I couldn't make out if it was writing or just scratches on the screw head when I blew the picture up.
The trigger guard on the commercial Hy-Score is machine pressed and has a curved cross section. As far as the prototypes go, the trigger guards look like a quick bending of some strip steel in a vice.
Just goes to show how hard photos can be to interpret sometimes , When you tilt the gun a bit it shows the curve, yet in dead on they look very flat, agree about the quick bending though!
(still think they look toy town though!..check out the raised C/S screw to front).
ATB, ED
Last edited by edbear2; 27-10-2022 at 08:36 AM.
Just a thought, but from the grip shape, there is a nod to an earlier pre war "Brittania" air pistol retailed by Frank Clarke. Don't suppose you have one to disassemble, to see if there is any similarities in the trigger mechanism, perhaps the use of the vee spring ? Cheaper non precision air pistols, maybe because they were generally sold for children and needed to look as exciting as possible, often seem to loosely follow real pistol appearance, in their design. By the later 1930's, the more modern semi automatic cartridge pistol designs had flat bottomed grips, the rounded bird head style grips had gone out of fashion. It would have been a fair bit of extra work making those rounded grips on your pistol, if they weren't intended on the final design.
Last edited by silva; 28-10-2022 at 01:09 AM.
"helplessly they stare at his tracks......."