Posted on 12/27/2023 11:00:07 AM PST by chrisinoc
Dec 27 - Gaston Glock, the reclusive engineer and tycoon who developed one of the world's best-selling handguns, died on Wednesday aged 94, Austrian news agency APA said.
The Austrian won loyal followings among police and military across the world with the weapons that bore his name. Forbes estimated his and his family's fortune at $1.1 billion in 2021.
His rise began in the 1980s when the Austrian military was looking for a new, innovative weapon.
Up until then, the Glock company had made military knives and consumer goods including curtain rods. But he assembled a team of firearms experts and came up with the Glock 17, a lightweight semi-automatic gun largely made of plastic.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
For sure.
Back in the day, when Glock pistols first came to market, I worked part-time in at an indoor gun range, and was introduced to the “revolutionary” Glock.
I did not like that “plastic pistol,” and even though I could have bought one for dealer cost, did not. IIRC, bought a Sig P226; liked the DA/SA trigger and the “feel” of a “real” pistol. I still have it, and it is one of my favorites!
Well, how times have changed! Having over the intervening years been exposed to several of Mr. Glocks finest efforts, my Christmas present to myself was a Gen 4 Glock 21! I am quite pleased with it.
RIP Mr. Glock. Ya Done Good!
Yeah, I was pretty sure he had to be a German or something like that ...
I new something was Wrong with That List !
.
Sam Colt
.
I got several Walkers.
My wife likes her Glock .22
Light weight.
Minimal up-kick.
Always at the ready...
It’s hard to express what size my hand is but my shoe size is 14EE and I guess my hands are similarly large. I think it’s bad form to indicate the size of ones gun collection in print but suffice it to say, I have choices, many choices
Nothing fits my hand more comfortably than a Glock. It just seems natural
That numbering convention though. That .22 is a 44 but if you get a 45 it’s a 9, so if you want a .45 you need a 21 or a 30 or a 36.
Tupperware coffin?
“Glock Perfection” and still perfecting them. Guess they weren’t perfect the first time. They are dirt cheap though. Great beginner’s gun for zipping yer leg.
They're numbered sequentially. Sort of.
Gaston already held 16 patents when he took the notion to make a pistol. The G-17's locking block became his 17th patent, which is why it was called a G-17.
Which makes sense in Glock-stria because Glocks are all about efficient manufacture, so he didn't waste any resources researching a catchy model name.
But that established a pattern Glock never deviated from. The G-48 is called the G-48 precisely because it was the next new design after the G-47. And Glock spent exactly €0.00 test-grouping the name for the new model
Leaving behind his 43-year old wife, Kathrin.
He didn't know anything the mainstream firearm manufacturers hadn't already figured out, they just weren't willing to go there (yet) in large part because they knew "gun guys" as a group tended to be set in their ways and resistant to change. And they saw no point in investing in new designs and manufacturing processes if the outcome would be in effect stealing market share from the guns they already were selling. So from their perspective, there was negative motivation to do what Glock did.
But that wasn't baggage Glock was saddled with. He wasn't yet selling guns, and initially his target market was nothing more than the Austrian army, who were as much as advertising they wanted something ... different.
But in every case, somebody somewhere already had used every material and/or principle that Glocks would become famous for.
JMB's Colt Model 1905 (ca. 1905) had no manual safety.
The Savage Model 1907 (ca. 1908) was striker fired.
JMB's prototype for what would (after his death) become the Browning HP-35 (ca. 1923) was striker-fired and had a 16-rd double-stack magazine.
The Remington Nylon 66 rimfire rifle (ca. 1959) had a stock made almost entirely of plastic.
The Heckler & Koch VP70 (ca. 1970) was double-action only, striker-fired, polymer-framed pistol that came standard with an 18-rd double-stack detachable box magazine. The original full-auto-capable version (VP70M) didn't have a manual safety. The civilian adaptation (VP70Z) included a cross-bolt safety behind the trigger.
So the VP70 sounds like the blueprint for a Glock (and beat it to the market by 12 years), except it also had a trigger effort better suited to a railway switch than to a firearm. And it was too "Buck Rogers"-looking for the 1970s gun-buying public.
European cars had been being sold in the US at least since the 1950s with key steel components (crankshafts, cams, etc) that had been treated with a metallurgical equivalent to Glock's trademarked Tenifer process, but as far as I know none of them advertised that fact. And Glock was the first manufacturer to use the process on gun parts, adapting what primarily had been an automotive process because of markedly increased wear resistance and decreased tendency to rust. So the process that gave birth to Melonite, NuTride, Nitron, Nitrotec, Kolene and about a hundred other names first gained recognition because of Glock.
Glock also sought to avoid the principle of "stacking tolerances" wherever possible, when that same concept was something of a badge of honor to the traditional gun companies: All fine guns should be made like a Swiss watch. Except Gaston only applied precision manufacturing to the parts that demanded it. Which is why the stamped steel slide release switch on a Glock costs about 1/10th as much to make as its precision machined counterpart on the Colt 1911. And like the Avtomat Kalashnikova, in recognition of the needs of his targeted military market, Kalashnikov and Glock both designed a gun whose operation wouldn't be made temperamental by sloppy parts fitment. So they would shrug off the grit and grime that necessarily accompanies firing a firearm.
I think there's a parallel between Glock's impact on the civilian firearm market and the 1970s oil embargo's effect on car sales. In the 1960s, most Americans thought buying a Japanese car would be unpatriotic. Then came 1973 and the Arab Oil Embargo. The price of sweet crude oil quadrupled almost overnight. And just as quickly, those Japanese crackerboxes that could get 35 mpg didn't look so unpatriotic any more. So America "discovered" Japanese cars.
The hitch was, those Japanese cars were much more durable than the typical American car. If your 1975 American-made car lasted 100,000 miles, you thought it was pretty good. But people found that if a 1975 Japanese car didn't last 200,000, it was a piece of crap. America came for the gas mileage but stayed for the reliability.
But this development was not lost on Detroit. They knew they were going to have to do something, else they risked being left in the lurch. So this this day, American automobiles are far more reliable and get better fuel economy than was was expected of them in 1975, as an indirect result of the Energy Crisis and the impact of American efficiency expert W. Edwards Deming on Japanese industry.
In 1982, much of the gun-o-sphere mocked the "Tactical Tupperware" Glock. By 1990, Glocks had replaced the majority of the revolvers that had been standard issue to American law enforcement for about a century. The number that gets tossed around is that at one point, 60% of all LEOs in the US were carrying a Glock. And the laughing turned into crying. All the firearm manufacturers recognized it was either get with the plastic pistol program or get left in the lurch. Enter the "Age of the Wonder-9s."
So if today you're carrying a Sig P365 or a Springfield XD or an S&W M&P, you've got Gaston Glock to thank for it. If he hadn't rolled the dice, it's entirely possible the Wonder-9s would never have happened.
Yes. No problem when your 17th project turns out to be a big winner, and the 19th one too. When you’re up to four dozen across eight calibers, five generations, in full, compact, subcompact, and slimline sizes, it’s a mess.
I don’t think this is changing in post-Glock Glock, so I’m having fun with it. Looking forward to gen5 G30.
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