A pistol is a small gun that can be held and fired with one hand. Firearms had been in use for centuries before the handheld gun became practical. Until the 16th century, soldiers had to ignite the gunpowder by hand, a time-consuming and dangerous undertaking even with the largest cannon. In the early 1500s, however, the wheellock, an ignition mechanism that could be installed inside the firearm, was invented. Similar to the ignition system found in cigarette lighters today, the wheellock consisted of a steel wheel revolving against a flint, producing a spark to set off the powder. Handguns were soon in production and have remained popular ever since because they can be carried easily and leave one hand free to wield another weapon. Although it is not clear who was the first to develop a pistol, the first designs of about 1540 are commonly credited to Caminelleo Vitelli of Pistoia. Pistols with different firing mechanisms, such as the flintlock and the matchlock, were brought on the market in quick succession. The revolver, a kind of pistol with a revolving magazine tripped by the trigger action, soon followed.
A major drawback associated with early pistols—excepting revolvers—was that they could be fired only once before requiring manual reloading. A major advance in the design of pistols seemed in the offing when Hiram Maxim introduced a recoil-operated machine gun in 1884, a gun that used the energy released in firing a shot to reload itself. Within a decade the makers of firearms found ways to apply the technique to handguns. The first repeating pistol, with a lever that activated a bolt action, was brought on the market by Laumann, an Austro-Hungarian inventor in 1890. Another Laumann design, created two years later, used the so-called " blowback" system, which used the energy produced by the cartridge case as it attempted to leave the chamber when the gun was fired. This gun, called the Schönberger, is widely considered the prototype of the modern automatic pistol.
A more practical design was developed in 1893 by a German gunmaker, Hugo Borchardt, who came up with a toggle system and recoil mechanism similar to those in Maxim's machine gun. The recoil principle is generally favored over the blowback system by the military because it produces more power. Borchardt was also the first to propose a removable box magazine to be loaded inside the pistol butt.
The next design improvement came in 1895 with the German Mauser pistol, produced by Peter Mauser(1838-1914) and his brother Wilhelm, previously successful makers of bolt-action rifle s, who had tried, unsuccessfully, to sell a revolver design to the German military. The Mauser pistol employed the same principles as the Borchardt gun, but had a simpler design and was much stronger. It was assembled without a single screw or bolt in the firing mechanism, its interlocking elements tightly held in place by the pistol frame. However, these and other automatic pistols available at the time were expensive and considered unsuitable for military purposes. The automatic pistol brought out by Georg Luger (1848-1922), who interested Borchardt in the project for a while, signaled a change in military attitudes. The Borchardt-Luger pistol, smaller than previous models, had an angled grip and an improved trigger mechanism. The internal spring in the recoil mechanism was also improved, and a safety device prevented accidental firing. Perhaps the most significant improvement was the use of a smaller cartridge, which reduced the recoil and gave the weapon greater accuracy. The Swiss military adopted the Borchardt-Luger.
New designs were being developed at the same time in many different places in Europe. The American John Browning worked with a Belgian gunmaker, bringing out his first design using the blowback system in 1898. A greatly improved design, marketed three years later, became tremendously popular in Europe, not least because it had only three major components: the barrel, frame and the slide. Browning then went on to develop a pistol for Colt, which became the famous.45 automatic. One of the oldest European companies producing firearms, the Beretta firm, produced a pistol with an external hammer, which showed immediately whether the gun was cocked or not. The next improvement came with Carl Walther's 1929 blowback automatic with a fixed barrel, which had a protruding pin indicating whether there was a cartridge in the chamber. Subsequent improvements included safety catches easily operable by the left or right hand and a pistol that could fire three-round bursts.
By and large pistols have changed little over the last half century. They are used primarily by law enforcement agents and for personal defense. Since they are small and light, pistols are easily stolen or used by people other than their owners. This problem was addressed in the late 1990s by several American pistol manufacturers, who developed so-called ŇsmartÓ guns that could only be fired by their owners. This was to prevent accidental deaths, especially by children playing with parentsŐ guns. The smart gun is fitted with a radio transmitter that emits a signal. The gunŐs user has a transponder (radio receiver/transmitter), worn in some designs embedded in a finger ring, in others in a small badge affixed to the userŐs clothing. When the transponder picks up the weaponŐs signal, it sends a code back to the gun, and the gun automatically removes a pin blocking the trigger mechanism, allowing the gun to be fired. Because the transponder has a range of only a few inches, the gun should not fire in anyone but the legitimate userŐs hand, even if it is snatched away in a close struggle. Though personalizing a pistol in this way added greatly to its cost, it seemed able to alleviate much concern about handgun safety.
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