By contrast, the original 1900 Colt Automatic Pistol had a total production run of less than 5000.Īs early as 1901 FN was anxious to put a larger military pistol on the market. The FN was a stunning commercial success, with a production record of 100,000 pistols within three years and a total production of 724,450 over twelve years. 32 caliber, and the following year Colt’s began to manufacture the Colt Automatic Pistol in. So it was that FN manufactured the 1899/1900 FN Browning in. According to Donald Bady, tacit in theseĪgreements was the understanding that Colt’s would manufacture Browning’s locked-breech recoil-operated designs and FN would manufacture the unlocked-breech “blowback” designs. Browning and Fabrique Nationale (FN) signed a similarĪgreement giving FN the right to sell Browning-designed weapons in much of Europe, and specifically excluding them from markets in the United States, Great Britain, and Ireland. Browning’s pistol designs in the United States and market them in the United States, Great Britain, and Ireland. The agreement gave Colt’s the exclusive right to Browning entered into an agreement with The Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company. On 24 July 1896 John Moses Browning and Matthew S.
