Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Origins of the .357 magnum

Who designed/invented the .357 Magnum?

Wesson? Keith?


-SL

Smith & Wesson

Elmer Keith, Phillip Sharpe, and Smith & Wesson.

Wikipedia Agrees:

here is more:

The .357 Magnum was designed for hunting, but was quickly adopted by police, who sought a cartridge with increased effectiveness against criminals in automobiles, and for self-defense use. Much credit for its development is given to hunter and experimenter, Elmer Keith. Keith's work in loading the .38 Special to higher and higher pressure levels was made possible by the availability of heavy, target shooting-oriented revolvers like the Smith & Wesson 38/44 "Heavy Duty" and "Outdoorsman", .38-caliber revolvers built on .44-caliber frames. While the .38 Special cartridge is limited to 16,500 c.u.p. (copper units of pressure), the .357 Magnum is loaded to 35,000 c.u.p. The objective was to create a handgun cartridge that combined deep penetration, flat trajectory, and long range. To prevent its possibly disastrous use in older, weaker .38 revolvers, the .357 Magnum case is 0.135 inches longer than the .38 Special case.

BMT

To be fair, Winchester should get a tip of the hat too.

The .357 was designed during the gangster era, to give highway patrol and deputies on those lonely roads the juice to shoot through the heavy sheet metal on the cars of that era.

Mainly Keith and S&W.

The others got in on the act as followers once Keith and S&W got things going. Sharpe chimed-in to endorse the idea after Keith and S&W had persuaded Winchester to load the ammo.
Sharpe even copied and modified Keith's bullet design. Both versions are excellent bullets.

Ken, I'll have to take your word on that because...Hell, I wasn't there. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Not according to S&W historian Roy Jinks. He doesn't even mention Keith in regards to the cartridge's development. Keith was certainly experimenting with heavy .38 Special loads in the 38/44 but so were a lot of people I'm sure. According to Jinks it was Phil Sharpe who urged S&W to develop the cartridge and worked closely with them in doing so.

Keith certainly and repeatedly tried to take credit for it, but since Jinks has all the old S&W letters and documents in his collection and certainly is the recognized expert on the company's history, I tend to believe him.

Jinks does credit Keith, and rightly so, with pushing for the development of the .44 Magnum.

Wikipedia is edited by people like us. You could put in there that Sammy Davis, Jr. invented the 357 and somebody would believe it.


Okie John

Agreed. Wiipedia is often wrong.

Thanks guys! I had posted on Shooting Lady's other post it was Wesson and had thought the EK link was incorrect... But didn't have the juice to say where...

I wouldn't take Roy Jinks's word as gospel on the the time of day if he were looking at my watch.

Jinks was just one reference that came to mind. I never base my opinions on only one source. Some others include Skeeter Skelton in his article "My Friend The .357". He also credits Sharpe and doesn't mention Keith. Even more revealing, I believe, is a profile of the .357 Magnum in the March 1951 American Rifleman where Al Barr also credits Sharpe and makes no mention of Keith, and Keith was on Staff at the time.

As I see it, Keith loaded everything heavy and wrote about it, safe or not. He blew up quite a few guns as he freely admitted. Some of the .38 Special loads he developed in the early 30s are downright irresponsible, even with todays stronger cases. His basic load development procedure seemed to be to keep adding powder until something stuck or blew.

Sharpe was a true ballistician and immensely knowledgable on all aspects of handloading His goal was to improve ballistics within safe guidelines and it was he that S&W and Winchester worked with in developing the .357.

I like Keith but his experiments were hardly scientific and much of the credit he gets for some developments are due more to his self-promoting than to actual fact.

Don't know if he had anything to do with developing the .357 but Dick Tracy sure did promote it. Remember?

FWIW - Elmer Keith did NOT design the .44 Magnum.

I agree. He was very influential in getting a hot .44 but, if I recall Keith's writings correctly, he simply asked for hot .44 Special factory loads.

That is how I remmeber it as well. I no longer have any of the Kieth articles,but if my memory is correct a hot loaded 44 Special factory load was what Elmer was asking for, one like his hot handloads

I think it fair to say that Elmer Keiths experiments and promotion of powerful handgun rounds was influentional in the success of the various magnums. But I don't see that he invented any of them.

To me an inventor is someone who designs something, either develops the prototypes himself or contracts a shopt to make them, and fine tunes the prototypes and possibly produces them commercially. Elmer Keith was far from that in the case of the 357 and 44 mags.

You could put in there that Sammy Davis, Jr. invented the 357 and somebody would believe it.


He didn't???? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

L.W.