Winchester Model 1894 (also known as Winchester 94,or Win 94,) is a lever-action rifle which became one of the most famous and popular hunting rifles. It was designed by John Browning in 1894 and originally chambered to fire two metallic black powder cartridges, the .32-40 Winchester and .38-55 Winchester. It was the first rifle to chamber the smokeless powder round, the 30 WCF, for Winchester Center Fire. This round was later chambered by Marlin which designated it the .30-30, which used the black powder cartridge nomenclature of using the caliber as the first number and the grains of black powder as the second. Marlin used this nomenclature so as to not promote its competitor's products. The 30-30 name finally became synonymous with the cartridge and Winchester ultimately dropped the 30 WCF nomenclature. The 1894 was produced by Winchester Repeating Arms Company through 1980 and then by U.S. Repeating Arms under the Winchester brand until they ceased to manufacture rifles in 2006. The rifles are back in production today, being made by the Miroku company of Japan and imported into the United States by the Browning Arms company of Morgan, Utah.
The Model 1894 has been referred to as the "ultimate lever-action design" by firearms historians such as RL Wilson and Hal Herring. The Model 1894 is the rifle credited with the name "Winchester" being used to refer to all rifles of this type and was the first commercial sporting rifle to sell over 7,000,000 units.
Read more about Winchester Model 1894: Overview, Design Changes, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words winchester and/or model:
“Up from the South at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain’s door,
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.”
—Thomas Buchanan Read (1822–1872)
“The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery....Child’s play is the infantile form of the human ability to deal with experience by creating model situations and to master reality by experiment and planning.”
—Erik H. Erikson (20th century)