Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Response to Barsness' Challenge: "Still The One"

The Nov/Dec 2014 issue of Sports Afield arrived here today, containing a John Barsness article "Still The One". The article begins

• Think had for a minute, or even an hour, and try to come up with any mechanical device developed before 1900 that's still considered the best. Steam locomotive? Pocket watch? Alexander Graham Bell's version of the smartphone? Nope, nope, and nope.

Well-researched, well-written, and well-illustrated, John's article extols the Model 98 Mauser as the best of the bolt-actions for hunting rifles.

It took only a minute or so to come up with the likelihood that the best dropping-block action for a hunting rifle was developed before 1900. However, there doesn't appear to be any consensus of "best dropping block" that is equivalent to that for the M98 in the bolt-action category. The Farquharson, Rolling Block, Sharps, Sharps-Borchardt, M1885, all have advocates for best-in-category.

However, apart from firearms, it took a little less than an hour for me to come up with another mechanical device in which a pre-1900 model was best: Dover hand-held hand-operated egg beaters. Like the M1898, the Dover beater incorporated a number of patents. Several million were sold before 1900. They became so popular and commonplace that some recipe books used the term "dovering eggs" to indicate the eggs were to be beaten with a hand-held mixer. Like the M98, the patents on Dover beaters have expired long ago, and there are modern imitators for sale, perhaps with "improvements"; none do their job better than a good old Dover. You can find them in antique shops and eBay. Also like the M98, prices for original Dover beaters have started to rise sharply.
--Bob
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Thanks very much for the information! I may have to use it, say a decade from now when somebody asks me to write another 98 Mauser article.

The safety pin and humble paper clip come immediately to mind, though I would rather have a Mauser '98.
Well done John, keep our minds focused where betterment lay.

Toilet paper. Toilet paper rolls were patented in 1883.
Nothing better yet....

In nominating the Dover mixer, I was attempting to stay within John's category of a "mechanical device". My inference from the article was that, first, the device had to possess some moderate (at least) mechanical complexity. Second, it also must have been available in several design variations so that one or another pre-1900 model of the type of device might be called "best".
--Bob

Bowie Knife

The Claw Hammer. What's to improve on it?

No argument here, M98 it is.

Must be right? Last time I did an inventory there were at least four or five variants in the pile. Some, the Real McCoy.

Two more, if we count them 1903 "knockoffs"?

I hesitate to state the obvious here but another mechanical device developed before 1900 that is "still the one"- how abut the 1894 Winchester? . and invented in America, too.

I'll vote for that!

I'd not consider a knife a mechanical device.

Probably the MOST important invention yet!

No, but much more useful than a egg beater!

My TP rolls have shrunk an inch in width however the diameter of their target has remained the same as best as I can tell.

It has too many moving parts to ever be successful. I predict it won't last another 200-300 years.

A Colt SAA has got to be near the top of pre1900 inventions...

Would have thought the bottle opener would have gotten some love...

Good point John. I just wish Mauser had been left handed.

Very likely true. However--

JB wrote to support the proposition that the Mauser 98 is the best hunting bolt action ever. He argued this by citing many points of the M98's superiority to other actions, and noted that the M98 is widely regarded as being the best bolt action for a hunting rifle. (I found his arguments convincing, but I will admit prejudice; even the shotgun I use for turkey hunting is an M98, somewhat modified.)

The challenge which introduced the article was to name another pre-1900 mechanism besides the M98 that was better than anything since developed in its class. The only example I could come up with quickly was a hand-cranked egg beater, which compared with hunting rifles is admittedly a pretty obscure category.

In this context, the question for the Colt SAA would be this: Is the Colt SAA, a pre-1900 mechanism, better than any other single action revolver? For the title of best-in-class, the Ruger and Freedom Arms revolvers, introduced post-1900, might be tough competitors of the Colt.

A previous suggestion that the M94 Winchester might be the best lever action for hunting is intriguing. It was developed well before 1900, and is undeniably the most popular such action. Would it be considered a better lever action than the M71?

--Bob

No, I vote that would have to be the Savage 99.

Savage 99 has it beat six ways to Sunday (and still pre 1900).