This year is the hundredth anniversary of John Moses Browning’s Colt M1911 automatic pistol, the basis of pretty much every automatic handgun. The design is so successful that, to the untrained eye, a .45 automatic manufactured today will look very much the original 1911. Here, for example is my own Kimber .45, purchased in the mid-1990s:
Compare this to the original M1911, and the even closer (and only slightly revised) M1911A from 1926:
The M1911 deign has really stood the test of time. You’d be hard-pressed to find a device of similar complexity still in common use today that hasn’t undergone radical modification. Hats off to the far-sighted shade of John Moses Browning.