Arthur William Savage, was a businessman, inventor, and explorer. He is most famous for inventing the Savage Model 99lever-action rifle, which remained in production for over 100 years, and founding Savage Arms. However, his most lasting and valuable inventions may be radial tires, and it has been argued, the modern detachable box magazine used in almost all modern military firearms. He also invented an early torpedo and built and raced cars.
In the late 1880s he took his family to Australia, homesteading in a covered wagon. He came to own what was then the largest cattle ranch in Australia. Eleven years later he sold it and bought a coffee plantation in Jamaica. In 1892 he moved to Utica, New York, and hired himself to a railroad, the Utica Belt Line Street Railroad. He also got part-time work at a gun factory, the Utica Hammer Magazine Company.
Savage Arms
Savage and his son Arthur John began designing guns. His first model in 1887 was a lever-action rifle with the magazine in the stock, rather than under the barrel. Six years later, he patented a lever-action rifle able to shoot then-modern guncotton military center-fire cartridges with.303-caliber spitzer bullets. This "Model 95" was the direct predecessor of the Savage Model 99. Savage invented a novel rotary magazine rifle. A benefit of this magazine was that it had a cartridge counter on the left side of the receiver that enabled the shooter to tell how many cartridges remained in the magazine. Lacking sufficient manufacturing capacity the first 9600 Model 1895 rifles were contracted to be built by Marlin Repeating Arms and are so marked with the JM proof mark. In 1894, Savage started Savage Arms in rented space on Hubbell street in Utica, New York to produce his new rifle. Slightly later, in 1897, he filed for the patent on a nearly identical gun with a removable box magazine. This is substantially the modern Savage Model 99 lever-action rifle. It stayed in production until 1999. The modern removable box magazine often seen on military rifles was invented in 1908 by Savage, as an improvement to the Model 99. It did not come into wide use until his patent expired in 1942 with the obvious exception of the family of rifles designed by James Paris Lee and adopted by the USN and the British Empire; first as the Lee–Metford and later as the Lee–Enfield rifles. The box magazine has many attractive features that ensured its eventual dominance: shoulders to retain cartridges when it is removed from the rifle, operates reliably with cartridges of different lengths and is insertable and removable at any time with any number of cartridges. This allows the operator to reload the gun infrequently, carry magazines rather than loose cartridges, and to easily change the types of cartridges. It is assembled from inexpensive stamped sheet metal. When empty the follower stops the bolt from engaging the chamber, informing the operator of the gun's emptiness before any attempt to fire. Savage collaborated on the invention of the Savage-Halpine torpedo, which was eventually adopted by the Brazilian navy. Although U.S. sea trials were successful, it was not adopted in the U.S., due to political considerations.
