Borchardt C-93

The Borchardt C93 is a semi-automatic pistol designed by Hugo Borchardt in 1893, drawing on the toggle lock mechanism of the Maxim gun to create a locked breech, short recoil action in which the barrel and breech travel backward together briefly before the breech unlocks. Borchardt also created the high velocity, bottlenecked 7.65x25mm Borchardt cartridge for the pistol, and his assistant Georg Luger later claimed a hand in its design. It was manufactured by Ludwig Loewe and Company of Berlin, which built about 1,100 units, with nearly 2,000 more later produced by Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken, making the C93 the first mass produced semi-automatic toggle action pistol.