Potato Digger at War: Marlin Model 1917 Machine Gun

John Browning’s first machine gun design was a gas operated system that used a swinging lever instead of a linear piston. He presented the first prototype to Colt in 1890, and it went into production in 1895. The US Navy bought a couple hundred, but the Army opted not to adopt it (much to Colt’s surprise). It was offered for sale internationally, but didn’t become very popular until World War One broke out.

By this time, Colt had improved it a bit with a finned detachable barrel, and they started getting orders for thousands of the guns from Belgium, Russia, Canada, Britain, and elsewhere. Unable to keep up with demand, they licensed the design to the Marlin company. Marlin made a few additional improvements (pistol grip attachment, sights, and access door for clearing malfunctions) and made several thousand for allied nations as well as 2,500 fort he US Army to use as training guns in 1917. They further improved the design by changing it to a linear gas piston, and sold some 38,000 to the US military for aircraft use.

3D animation of the Colt 1895 mechanism from vbbsmyt: https://youtu.be/7j8UQNPlhsY

Marlin 7MG Aircraft Gun: https://youtu.be/pvNhtGOpSZw