French Mle. 1935A pistol in 7.65 French Long, similar to the old .30 Pedersen cartridge.

Norwegian Sunngard 1909 6.5x19mm pistol.

Norwegian Sunngard pistol in 6.5mm Sunngard (6.5x19mm), 1910.

The Uniquely Awkward Sunngård Automatic Pistol - Harald Sunngård's modified handgun carried 50 rounds before needing a reload.
Harald Sunngård was a Norwegian inventor in the early years of the 20th century who noticed a common perceived weakness of automatic pistols: reloads under stress were often bungled by shooters, leaving them vulnerable to return fire without being able to shoot back. Doing the classic inventor thing, Sunngård figured out a solution to the problem in 1909–a two-part solution, in fact. The first part of his solution was to use a big magazine and a small cartridge, to maximize magazine capacity. The second part of his solution was to store a spare magazine right in the magazine well of the pistol for immediate use.

The grip of the pistol is long enough front-to-back to store two identical magazines. The front magazine sits higher than the rear one, and the bolt face on the slide feeds rounds from the front magazine into the chamber. Once the front magazine is empty, the shooter ejects it, and need only slide the rear magazine into the front position (and rack the slide) to continue shooting. There is a misconception that the pistol will fire automatically from both magazines in succession, but this is not true.

In addition to having the handy spare available, Sunngård designed the magazines to hold no fewer than 25 cartridges each (in the more common 6.5mm chambering). This gave the pistol a total of 50 rounds stored on-board, which was a major point in Sunngård's marketing. Even today, typical pistol magazines rarely exceed 18 rounds. Sunngård's concept was that in a gunfight, someone with his pistol could goad their opponent into firing 7 or 8 rounds (the typical capacity of an automatic pistol at the time), and they exploit an advantage when the opponent had to reload. Presumably, one would make sure not to get hit by any of those first 7 or 8 rounds…

The 6.5mm cartridge designed for Sunngård's pistol had a 23mm overall length, and used a 19mm long case. The projectile was a scant 28.5 grains (1.85 gram), and Sunngård claimed a muzzle velocity of just under 2000 ft/s (600 m/s)–which is almost certainly an exaggeration. There was also an 8mm version of the pistol made in much smaller numbers, which fired an equally light projectile (29gr / 1.88g), and may have gotten closer to the claimed velocity (magazines for the 8mm version held 18 rounds each). https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a18016/forgotten-weapon-sunngard-automatic-pistol/

The process for moving the spare magazine into position is fairly well described in the patent. The main magazine catch is basically a heel release on the front edge of the magazine well, and it is pushed back in the typical manner to allow the primary magazine to be removed. Then the rear magazine is pulled slightly forward and down as if to remove it from the gun. The rear magazine is then slid forward into the front position and pushed back up to lock into place on the magazine catch. A pair of small guides (labelled "6" in the patent drawing above) at the top of the magazine well prevent the magazine from being pushed backwards into the now-empty space for the spare magazine, and these guides are the reason the spare mag must be pulled down and then pushed back up. When initially loading the pistol, the spare magazine is inserted first, and locked back into its compartment (held up by a fixed shelf, "9"). Then the primary magazine is inserted just like in any other pistol.

Mechanically, the Sunngård is pretty simple. It uses a plain blowback action, as no locking system is necessary for its small cartridge. The barrel is fixed to the receiver, and a recoil spring is located around the barrel and inside the barrel shroud/slide.

Sunngård apparently tried hard to market the pistol to a variety of military forces, but found no takers. He was able to get the gun entered into the 1914 Norwegian military trials, where it was bested by the Colt 1911 (we don't have a testing report from the trials, which would be very interesting to read). If I had to guess based on the general attitudes of the day, I would suspect that Ordnance officers found the reloading process awkward, the cartridge underpowered, and the need for a very high capacity pistol unconvincing.

Technical Specs
Caliber: 6.5mm (also 8mm)
Cartridge: 6.5mm Sunngård (6.5x19mm) (also 8x19mm)
Bullet weight: 28.5 gr (1.85g)
Overall length: 8.0in (203mm)
Barrel length: 6.2in (158mm)
Height: 5.3in (135mm)
Weight unloaded: 26.8oz (760g) (28oz/800g for the 8mm variant)
Weight loaded: 33.8oz (960g)

>>107561
>"Sunngård's concept was that in a gunfight, someone with his pistol could goad their opponent into firing 7 or 8 rounds (the typical capacity of an automatic pistol at the time), and they exploit an advantage when the opponent had to reload. Presumably, one would make sure not to get hit by any of those first 7 or 8 rounds…"

So the idea behind this was literally "shoot me and see what happens asshole."

>>107568
Exactly. Such was the selling point of higher capacity pistols in the 1890s that touted having a few more shots than a standard revolver and in a detachable magazine that could be reloaded faster. All true, but most gunfights typically were over after only a few shots were fired.

Such as with the Borchardt C-93 (Construktion 93) semi-automatic pistol that was designed by Hugo Borchardt and Georg Luger in 1893 based upon the Maxim toggle-bolt design. Borchardt also developed the high-velocity bottlenecked 7.65×25mm Borchardt cartridge for the C-93. With about 1,100 manufactured by Loewe and nearly 2,000 more produced by Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken, the Borchardt C-93 was the first mass-produced semi-automatic pistol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borchardt_C-93

The 7.65×25mm Borchardt had an 8-round detachable box magazine, but that wasn't much more firepower than a standard six-shooter. Pistols like the Borchardt and the 10-shot Mauser C96 were technology demonstrators that ushered in the time of the automatics.

  Early Automatic Pistols https://youtu.be/t51TgOlnSSc
Forgotten Weapons - Published on Jul 21, 2011
A general look at a couple of early automatic pistol designs, and what they have in common. We have a Bergmann-Bayard M1910/21, a C96 "Broomhandle" Mauser, and an Astra M900.

  Development of the Luger Automatic Pistol https://youtu.be/rIX1EL1hTmE
Lugers! there are approximately a gazillion different recognized varieties, because the pistol became so popular and iconic. And yet...they all kinda look the same, don't they? (If you are a Luger collector, don't answer that!) A great many ( I daresay the significant majority) of the Luger variations are minor changes in production details. So, what was involved in the mechanical evolution of the Luger?

Not much, really - which is a testament to the talents of Georg Luger. He got the gun almost totally right on his first try. There are, however, two major variants of the Luger mechanically - the 1900 model and the 1906 model. In this video I will walk through the differences between these two, as well as the initial Borchardt pistol that Luger used as his starting point and a couple other relevant milestones (a Swiss trials gun and a transitional French trials gun). And since they are the most common of the military models, we will also take a quick look at the German Army, Navy, and Artillery models.

  >>107529
Timely! Ian discusses the Sunngård Automatic Pistol.