Autococker - History

History

In late 1986, Bud Orr created the original Sniper pump marker by carving the works of a standard Sheridan PGP into an aluminum block that would accept a longer barrel. The Sniper was operated in a manner similar to pump-action shotguns in that it had to be manually recocked after each shot to load the next round. In 1987, Orr founded Worr Game Products to sell the products he was developing, and by 1988 he was running the business full-time. In order to stay competitive with the rising popularity of semiautomatic markers in the late 1980s, Orr added a pneumatic system onto the Sniper. The pneumatics automatically re-cocked the marker after each shot, and in 1989 the Autococker was born. There is a lot of controversy as to whether the design was stolen from Glenn Palmer (who has repeatedly and publicly made and defended this claim and has given a detailed accounting of the circumstances) or was actually Bud's innovation.

In the early 1990s the Autococker quickly rose to become one of the most popular markers used by top professional teams, used by such teams as Bob Long's original Ironmen. Although heavily criticized for reliability and a number of design defects, it proved to be an easy platform to work off and aftermarket parts soon appeared shortly after its inception. One of the most fundamental and important upgrades was the Palmer “Rock” low pressure regulator (LPR) to replace the troublesome stock LPR. With a variety of options appearing for parts, Belsales in the UK became the first company to build WGP-certified aftermarket cockers, called “Evolution” in 1993. Throughout the remainder of the 1990’s, dozens of shops ranging from large notables such as Dave Youngblood Enterprises (Dye), Shocktech, Planet Eclipse, Belsales and FreeFlow down to small one man pro-shop operations made a business of servicing and customizing Autocockers with price tags of nearly $2000 for high-end models. A combination of performance, upgradeability and cosmetic options made it one of the top tournament markers of the 90’s. Only the Automag rivaled it in popularity until electronic markers appeared. Indeed, the autococker was so ubiquitous that its barrel threading became one of the most commonly used standards on high-end markers (akin to how firearm cartridge sizes are often named for the first popular gun model or manufacturer to use them). To this day, most high-end markers, and many entry-level as well, accept barrels with "autococker threads".

By the turn of the century, with the advent and increased popularity of electropneumatics, it no longer became profitable for specialized shops to produce custom autocockers, and they slowly began to disappear. Though the introduction of partial-electropneumatic conversion kits in the early 2000s by companies like Planet Eclipse extended the autocockers' popularity by a few more years, the availability of fully electropneumatic markers that required less work to maintain caused the autococker to lose favor with tournament teams, and eventually, casual players as well. Newer Autocockers with integrated, solenoid-controlled pneumatics remain available, boasting lesser maintenance and tuning. "Classic" Autococker models retain some popularity with recreational players, some of whom "revert" the design back to the pump-action "Sniper" concept for use in pump play.