Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten Weapons.com. I am Ian.
I am here today at the Rock Island Auction House, checking out some of the guns that they are--
--going to be selling in their upcoming December of 2015 premier auction.
One that a lot of people have been asking about that I haven't done a video until just now is...
The C-93 Borchardt Automatic Pistol.
Now this has the distinction of being the world's first commercially successful
[or mostly commercially successful] automatic pistol.
It is also specifically the first high-power locked-breech automatic pistol that that was really--
--practical and effective and successful on the market.
Now, there were some pistols that came first, (like the Salvator-Dormus and the Laumann Shönberger)
Um...
There were a few... the thing is most of these, most of the pistols... ALL the pistols that--
--preceded the Borchardt were made only in small numbers, basically prototypes only--
--and they were for military testing, most of them actually for Austrian military testing.
And so they'd make a few and then they'd fail the testing because they weren't all that good (like me in school)
They weren't advanced enough. And then--and that's all you'd hear from these designs.
In addition virtually all of them were either blowback or delayed blowback.
There are a few patent designs that predate the Borchardt
They do use locked breech systems, short recoil or long recoil or various other types of actual locked breech.
However, none of those guns survived, we don't know of any surviving examples of those guns actually being--
--built prior to the C-93.
so...
When people claim that this is the world's first automatic pistol, They are pretty much correct (but not entirely)
Now, this was designed by a guy named Hugo Borchardt (1844-1924) who was a very...--
--He is a talented skilled dude, he had a couple dozen German patents on firearms.
In addition to a bunch of patents on non-firearm related things. so early in Borchardt's career--
--He actually travelled to the United States, lived here for many years and worked in the firearms industry here.
um, and that gave him a wider experience than most of the other Austrian designers at the time.
So, he worked for the Winchester company for a while
which gave him access to, well, everything there was to know at the time about Winchester's lever action systems--
--which would come back to be exploited in the Borchardt.
He also worked for the Sharps Rifle Company. In fact He was superintendent of the Sharps Rifle company for a couple years--
That had the interesting effect of putting him in contact with James Paris Lee.
Lee was the inventor of the box magazine, and Borchardt-- actually one of his patents was for--
--some improvements to Lee's magazine, that were helpful in the early development of that system.
And the magazine is also an area where Borchardt will be--
--will stand apart from a lot of the other very early Automatic Pistol Designers.
Now after the Sharps Rifle Company went into bankruptcy, Borchardt traveled back to Europe--
--moved back to Germany.
And it's at that point that he develops the gun that despite all of his other...
...very legitimate work in firearms design the gun he's really known for is the C-93 Pistol.
So, in a nutshell what we have here is a short recoil operation.
So the whole assembly here moves back when you fire, and then it is a toggle locked pistol.
So this comes back, and then we have a toggle here
very much like a Luger for reasons we will get to in just a moment.
(the pistol is not disassembled in this video)
Has a straight grip, or virtually straight grip and it has a box magazine in the grip of the pistol.
This is something that none of the other Austrian Pistol designers at the time were doing.
They were pretty much all using Mannlicher style 5 round clips.
and I'm pretty sure it would have been Borchardt's experience with the Sharps Company and James Lee--
--that gave him the motivation and the experience and the understanding to do a pistol like this.
And this would set the standard.
Borchardt is really the first pistol to be developed with the magazine in the grip.
In the style that today is simply considered naturally how you do a pistol.
Now... It's a distinctive pistol for this very bulbous weird overhanging thing on the back of the gun.
This is actually the mainspring assembly. There is a coiled flat mainspring back here--
And that's what provides the force...
...to run the toggle mechanism.
This is really the biggest flaw in the pistol, so Borchardt hooked up with DWM (deutsche waffen und munitionsfabriken)
--which was actually at the time it was the Ludwig Lowe Company.
Became renamed DWM a few years later
DWM and Lowe at that time were kind of the premier arms makers of Germany, and maybe even of Europe.
It was a massive arms Conglomerate, and it was kind of a natural choice for Borchardt to hook up with--
--to manufacture his pistol. In total 3,000 of these pistols were made.
And there is almost no variation between them. If you leave out the the early developmental prototypes,
All Borchardt Pistols are effectively identical.
They all have parts--interchangeable parts between them.
And they were all made to a very high quality of workmanship and tolerances.
Now they were tested by most of the military forces of the day, of the United States among others.
But the most important test--most important military to look at these was the Swiss Military.
They, they were an influential group. And frankly they came back and said pretty much the same thing that--
--everybody else did when they tested this pistol.
Which was they liked it,
ｂｕｔ
It was a bit susceptible to dirt and dust, and it was very awkward with this huge overhanging recoil spring assembly.
Now I should point out there is this lug on the back,
These pistols are all designed to take a flat board style shoulder stock. (cool)
And with that stock they're actually a surprisingly practical little carbine.
They're a pretty awkward handgun to use, But that stock really makes a difference.
Now, from a military perspective, most countries weren't looking for a pistol caliber carbine--
--They were looking for a handgun. So that the stock didn't make a big difference to them.
Anyway, the Swiss and pretty much everybody else said that this thing was too bulky, and not quite reliable enough.
DWM took these complaints to Borchardt. You know, basically saying:
"Hey, we think we might be able to get some military contracts for this thing,
"but we need to, we need you to make some changes to accommodate for these complains that the Swiss had
"Which by the way pretty much everyone else has too"
And Borchardt's reaction was that his pistol was just perfectly fine as it was, it did not need any improvement-
--He would not improve it because it could not be improved, He wouldn't make any changes.
And... frankly if people didn't like it. They should uh...
...well they were wrong. And they should appreciate the brilliant pistol that he had designed.
That wasn't really what DWM-- Lowe wanted to hear, so what they did was they then hired [or assigned]--
--one of their employees a guy named Georg Luger (sound familiar?)--
--To make the changes himself, to take this Borchardt design--
--and turn it into something more practical for the military market.
That was something that Luger was really good at. Taking an existing design and improving it.
And he took this and he turned it into the Luger Pistol. (in 1898)
From there, it's kind of all history.
I do want to point out a few things about this. It used the 7.63 Borchardt Cartridge.
Which was actually designed by Georg Luger.
He was really good at designing cartridges as well.
It was a little bottlenecked cartridge, basically the same dimensions as 7.63 Mauser or 7.62 Tokarev.
slightly--slightly lighter loaded than the 7.63 Mauser
(The 7.63x25 Borchardt Cartridge has a Wikipedia page)
Held 8 cartridges in the magazine which is not bad.
And you know, for the day this was a pretty potent high power pistol cartridge.
much more so than any of his competitors.
The controls on this pistol are pretty simple and effective.
We have a magazine release right here on the side.
We have a safety right there, up to safe, down is fire
Trigger, and that's that's pretty much it.
(oh god this is so satisfying)
So this particular gun is a very early one, This is serial number 68.
And it is matching on both the magazine and the gun.
There aren't a whole lot of markings that you will find on Borchardts.
on the one side you have a system Borchardt patent.
and on the top of the chamber...
We have Waffenfabrik (wapons factory) Lowe, Berlin.
Now this would change when Lowe changed their name to DWM, this would change to a DWM logo.
And lastly D.R.P. and a number that's a German patent number, which applies to the basic mechanism of the pistol.
Other than some commercial German proof marks here--
--That's pretty much all you're going to get from markings on the Borchardt.
So overall these pistols...
They never sold all that well...
Simply because they were a fairly clumsy design.
However, they did really set the stage-- well, obviously they set the stage for the Luger and they were actually an effective and practical semi-auto pistol.
In 1893 this was by far your best choice for--for anything in the semi-automatic pistol realm.
It would just turn out to be eclipsed by other designs pretty quickly.
Well, thank you guys for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video
This is probably a pistol that I should have covered on video a while back--
--But I didn't and this was the first opportunity we had, so...
if you would like to have this particular Borchardt for yourself...
...it is like I said a very early one.
Take a look at the link in the description text below that'll take you to Rock Islands catalog page about it.
You can see their pictures in their description, and if you just can't live without it you can either come here to--
--Rock island and place a bid in person or you can place a bid online, it's actually a very simple system.
Good luck. Thanks for watching. (all the subtitles by Neptune)