John Moses Browning (b. January 23, 1855 in Ogden, Utah; d. November 21, 1926 in Herstal, Belgium), was an American firearms designer who developed a wide variety of weapons, cartridges, and firearm mechanisms, many of which are used in the U.S. military and elsewhere to this day. Browning was granted his first patent in 1879 for a falling-block rifle called the Browning Single Shot. He was only 24 years old. This successful design, manufactured in his own gunsmith shop in Utah, caught the attention of the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. in 1883 and led to a nineteen-year relationship with that company. He contributed, selling the government one of his latest weapons for $750,000, Browning went on to become one of the most important figures in the development of modern repeating, semi-automa