[ Berger Manually Operated Pistol ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the
Institute of Military Technology taking a look
at a selection of cool firearms that they have.
And this is actually one that we've done a video on before,
but the example they have here is, first off, really gorgeous.
And second off, it's a little bit different from the last one we looked at.
And I wanted to show this one just as an example of how
with a lot of early designs elements changed, things were flexible and fluid.
And people were trying out a lot of different options.
So this is a Berger manually repeating pistol, you see it has a ring trigger.
And the curator here, Corey Wardrop, actually mentioned to me that
he thinks this ought to be called a quadruple action pistol.
And he's got a really good point. So a normal single action we think of as you have to manually cock it,
when you pull the trigger, all it does is fire.
And then a double action cocks the hammer and then fires it, so two things.
Well this extracts, ejects, loads, cocks, and fires.
So maybe a quintuple action pistol, all done with a single pull of the trigger.
So we'll take a look at that in a moment, but this particular one, this design,
was created by a guy named Marius Berger, b-e-r-g-e-r.
And dates to 1880 to 1881.
And these were actually manufactured by the Saint-Étienne Company in France.
So this is serial number 14, it has this gorgeous case hardening.
And I want to show you what's a little different about this one.
So what makes this Berger unique is the magazine system.
Now on the last one that we looked at the magazine had a tube mag,
basically like ... a Marlin Model 60, or a lot of other .22 calibre long rifles.
Where ... you'd rotate the locking tube, and pull the whole follower tube out of the magazine.
Load cartridges in through the end, and then put the follower back in, and lock it in place.
This one, which by the way is serial number 14,
instead has a system very much like a Henry rifle.
Where we have a follower here,
and what we do is bring it all the way up to the end, rotate it to lock.
And you can see that there's an inner tube.
When the gun is in the functioning position,
this tube closes off the magazine and holds the cartridges in place.
But when I lock it at the front,
that's our follower, and then I can set several cartridges in here.
This isn't exactly like a Henry, but it's close.
I put the cartridges in, and then I rotate the tube closed,
and allow the spring to tension on the cartridges.
So very much a different system.
And just an example of how people tried different things.
Especially with these early pistols when nobody yet knew
what was going to be the best way to do this sort of work.
Now since we are looking at this, we'll take a quick overview of the trigger mechanism again.
We have a ring trigger, and we have what kind of appear to be two separate breech blocks.
In reality this is the breech, that's the hammer.
And so what's going to happen here is as I pull the trigger,
you can see an extractor right there, it's going to pull an empty case out.
And at full travel the empty case gets ejected,
and then we have an elevator right ...
(this is a little tricky to get all in there),
right, there's our elevator, just pops up.
That brings a cartridge from the tube up to the chamber.
then as I continue (I'm going to hold onto the ... hammer here),
when I get to this point in the trigger pull, the breech block is going to go forward.
That chambers the new round, locks it in place.
You can see the firing pin on the back of the breech there.
And then as I continue to pull the trigger back,
the hammer comes back to full cock.
And then all the way back here
the hammer releases, drops, fires the cartridge.
So this is extract, eject, chamber, cock, and then fire. So quintuple action.
It's of course interesting to note that,
like the previous gun and the others that I've seen pictures of,
this has this enormous sort of half-round front sight.
But it actually has no rear sight anywhere on it.
There isn't a notch cut into the back of the hammer, there's a little dent there,
but ... if that's a rear sight notch, that is the lamest rear sight ever devised by humankind.
So I'm not entirely sure what the idea was for sighting with this.
They put a lot of work into getting a front sight, and none into a rear sight.
I don't know the answer to that one.
We do have this gorgeous case hardening on this example though.
And there are two markings on it that I will show you.
This is tiny, tiny, tiny, but there is our first one: Marius Berger, serial number 14, Breveté, S.G.D.G.
That ... basically means patented,
but the government doesn't guarantee it works, just that it's patented.
And then the other marking is here on top of the barrel,
that is a Saint-Étienne ... manufacturing proof mark.
Well, thank you for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
Just a little short look at a variant on a very rare and unusual early pistol.
These ring trigger repeaters are all kind of cool because they're all different.
None of them really worked out well, but they're certainly neat to look at,
and they have some interesting ideas, so.
If you enjoy this sort of gun, there are two things you ought to do.
The first is you ought to consider taking a look at my Patreon page.
It is subscribers there that make it possible for me to travel
to places like the IMT and bring you guns like this.
The second is you should check out the Institute of Military Technology.
They have a focus on preserving this type of firearms history, and educating people about it.
And while the collection is not open to the public, it is available by appointment
for folks who want to come here to do research, or investigate
interesting developmental firearms like this.
So that we can keep this history and learn from it.
Thanks for watching.