If you conduct a survey of today's youth and ask who invented the first machine, then the most popular answer will probably be "Mikhail Kalashnikov." In the best case, the names of the inventor of the Soviet machine gun PPSh of the Great Patriotic War George Shpagin or German Hugo Schmeisser will be named. But the name of the tsar’s general, and then of the Red Army, Vladimir Fedorov, who created the machine almost 100 years ago, is remembered only by the especially curious.
Mosin rifle
The creator of the world's first machine gun Vladimir Fedorov was born on May 15, 1874 in St. Petersburg. After graduating from the gymnasium, he entered the Mikhailovsky Artillery School located in his hometown, after which he commanded a platoon in one of the artillery brigades for two years. In 1897, the officer again became a cadet, but already at the Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy.
During training practice at the Sestroretsk arms factory, Fedorov met with his boss and inventor of the famous “three-ruler” of 1891, Sergei Mosin. It was with an attempt to improve the Mosin rifle, turning it into an automatic rifle, which many gunsmiths were actively engaged in, Vladimir began the career of an inventor. The service in the Artillery Committee and the opportunity to study technical and historical materials telling about various types of modern and ancient small arms helped him.
Six years after graduating from the Academy, in 1906, Fedorov submitted to the Artillery Committee his own version of the “three-ruler” converted into an automatic rifle. And although he received the approval of the military authorities, the very first firing proved: it is easier and cheaper to create new weapons than to try to change and improve an existing one. And the trouble-free rifle of the factory boss Sergei Mosin lived and fought safely until the middle of the last century, and remained without fundamental extraneous changes.
"Prototype-1912"
Putting the “three-ruler” aside, Vladimir Fedorov, together with the locksmith from the workshop of the officers' school at the Sestroretsk training ground and the future famous Soviet weapon designer, inventor of the registered machine gun and submachine gun, and also General Vasily Degtyarev, began work on his own automatic rifle. After four years of successful proving ground tests, Fedorov’s rifle was named the “Prototype 1912”.
The inventors made it of two types. One - under the standard cartridge of the imperial army of 7.62 mm caliber. The second - chambered for 6.5 mm, designed specifically for automatic rifles, greatly improving the speed and accuracy of fire. Unfortunately, to begin work on his creation and give the army new small arms, Fedorov and Degtyarev were prevented by the outbreak of World War I and the opposition of the War Ministry. Work on it was declared untimely and discontinued. And mostly the infantry weapons of the tsarist army, and behind it the Red Army and White Guard, remained for a long time "three-ruler."
