A Gun Maker With A Dead Aim
March 30, 2009
Arthur W. Savage was a restless overachiever.
He had already made his mark as an explorer, cattle baron and coffee grower before he invented the Model 99 lever-action rifle in 1893 that set new standards for innovation in the U.S. gun industry.
The founder of Savage Arms Co., a maker of rifles and shotguns based in Westfield, Mass., is also credited with designing the first radial tires.
Savage eventually left the gun firm he founded in 1894 to seed other businesses. But he infused the firm that still bears his name with a penchant for innovation that helped it survive the Great Depression and prosper through the present day.
“Savage was a mechanical genius,” Ron Coburn, today’s chief executive at Savage, told IBD. “Every time he developed a new product, whether it was a washing machine or a firearm or a lawn mower, he knew nothing about them. He just looked at the mechanics of the ones on the market and said: That’s not the way to do it — I can make a better one.”
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1857, Savage was the son of a British colonial official who created an education system for freed slaves.
Arthur displayed flashes of mechanical genius from an early age and a pragmatic approach to problem solving that highlighted his later career as an inventor.
After his schooling in America and Britain, Savage hit the road.
His early 30s found him wandering the Australian outback in a covered wagon with a wife and eight children. At one point, he was held prisoner by aborigines for a year before escaping. He later operated the largest cattle ranch in Australia.
On The Go
Ever restless, Savage tired of Australia, sold his ranch and bought a coffee plantation in Jamaica.
Soon Savage’s talent for invention was percolating. He constantly tinkered and improved the machines and other gadgets on his estate.
His first big invention was a naval weapon called the Savage Halpine torpedo, eventually adopted by the Brazilian navy.
Another find: a small artillery piece that was one of the first recoilless rifles. It was a lightweight gun that fired a heavy projectile.
America’s surging industrial power and its demand for talented inventors caught Savage’s attention. He immigrated from Jamaica with his family to Utica, N.Y., in 1892. Now in his mid-30s, he found work supervising a railroad line and gun parts maker.
Sizing up the firearms made by Colt, Remington and Winchester, Savage saw he could make a weapon mechanically superior and more powerful than any rifle at the time.
He planned to make a lever-action rifle that could fire larger caliber .303 pointed bullets used by the military. It would fire faster than bolt-action single-shot rifles. The rounds would pack a bigger wallop while traveling faster and farther.
Most lever-action guns of the day resembled the Winchester rifles seen in Hollywood Westerns.
Shooters worked the lever under the gun to cock and load it. The guns used bullets with rounded heads. That dimension stopped each round from accidentally going off from the recoil when packed in a magazine the length of the gun.
Pointed bullets were too dangerous. Stacked end to end, they typically detonated when striking the primer at the base of the cartridge.
To nix the problem, Savage designed a rotary magazine wrapped around the firing mechanism. The pointed bullets were fed vertically into the gun’s firing chamber.
The weapon was the first hammerless rifle. It used a spring-action firing pin, rather than a clumsy metal hammer, to fire rounds.
Another first was a counter on the rifle to show the number of bullets in the magazine.
The Model 99 unveiled in 1893 also boasted a graceful design with a handsome wooden stock. Its weight was finely balanced for shooting. All the user had to do was flip the lever to pump a round into the rifle’s chamber and pull the trigger in one smooth action.
Savage organized Savage Arms Co. in Utica in 1894 to produce the Model 99.
He hoped to sell his gun to the U.S. military. But the Army still favored slower, bolt-action rifles. The service didn’t want to risk a change.
Savage had a fallback. He introduced the Model 99 to sport hunters in 1897. “It was an immediate success,” Coburn said. “It started selling and just took off.”
The Model 99 was so mechanically perfect, it stayed in production with only minor changes to its basic design until 1999. It appeared in various grades and models. Though Savage no longer makes the gun, it’s gone down as one of the most popular hunting rifles ever made.
Savage’s innovative streak rubbed off on Savage Arms. He left the firm in 1917, having earlier sold off his interest to Utica businessmen, and the company kept making quality rifles, pistols and ammunition. It merged with Driggs-Seabury Ordnance Co. during World War I to produce Lewis machine guns.
When weapons demand tanked after the war’s end in 1918, Savage Arms acquired sporting arms maker J. Stevens Arms & Tool Co.
Anticipating peacetime demand, Savage Arms diversified into electrical appliances. By 1924, it had become the fifth largest maker of laundry machines in the U.S. and was selling more appliances than guns.
Savage Arm’s share price soared 254% in 79 weeks in the mid-1920s.
Arthur Savage wasn’t perfect. Despite his focus, people found him hard to work with.The driven side of Savage’s personality was so intense “that he drove everyone with him mad,” Coburn said. That edginess led the board of directors to ask the founder to leave the firm in 1917.
The upside of Savage’s intensity was it resulted in creative sparks during his firm’s early days.
Loaded For Bear
After Savage began selling his Model 99s, Indian Tribe Chief Lame Bear approached him about buying the rifles for his reservation.
Savage made a deal. He agreed to sell Lame Bear discounted Model 99s in return for the tribe’s endorsement, which Savage used in ad testimonials. The company’s Indian head logo, still used by Savage Arms today, was later adopted in 1919 with the chief’s blessing.
Savage kept making his mark after he left Savage Arms.
He moved out West and took up car racing. He often ripped the tires off his cars because they weren’t designed to withstand side torque.
He fixed the problem by mounting wires on the wheels’ sidewalls, creating the first radial tire. He and his son Arthur J. later started Savage Tire Co. in San Diego.
Savage died in California at age 84.
Savage Arms went through many ownership changes from the 1960s to the 1990s. It’s now a private firm that produces a range of firearms.
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