{"id":10852,"date":"2020-04-22T12:03:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T12:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/22\/curtis-1866-the-first-bullpup-with-jonathan-ferguson\/"},"modified":"2020-07-19T14:55:07","modified_gmt":"2020-07-19T19:55:07","slug":"curtis-1866-the-first-bullpup-with-jonathan-ferguson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/22\/curtis-1866-the-first-bullpup-with-jonathan-ferguson\/","title":{"rendered":"Curtis 1866: The First Bullpup &#8211; with Jonathan Ferguson"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"youtubomatic-video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"580\" height=\"380\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HcIG5OqQjlw?controls=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Join the Kickstarter campaign and preorder your copy of Jonathan&#8217;s &#8220;Thorneycroft to SA80: British Bullpup Firearms 1901 &#8211; 2020&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/headstamp\/thorneycroft-to-sa80-british-bullpup-firearms-19012020?ref=wf5ub7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/headstamp\/thorneycroft-to-sa80-british-bullpup-firearms-19012020?ref=wf5ub7<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sorry for the poor audio quality &#8211; today I am back at the Cody Firearms Museum talking to Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms &#038; Artillery at the Royal Armouries in the UK. Jonathan has written a new book on the history of British bullpup firearms, which Headstamp is very proud to be publishing!<\/p>\n<p>Today we are discussing the Curtis bullpup &#8211; a rifle designed and patented by William Joseph Curtis of the UK in 1866, but not put into production. It is a quite interesting design, with a slide action mechanism and drum magazine. The gun is designed to sit atop the shooter&#8217;s shoulder, with a trigger right out at the muzzle and the drum and firing mechanism actually behind the user&#8217;s back. Lawyers from the Winchester company discovered Curtis&#8217; patent in the 1890s while looking for slide action mechanisms as part of their defense of the Winchester 1893 again patent infringement claims by Francis Bannerman. This example of Curtis&#8217; gun was actually built in the Winchester tool shop as an example for the lawsuit, giving it a quite remarkable history intersecting several different areas of arms development.<\/p>\n<p>Video on the Curtis from The Armourer&#8217;s Bench: <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/zWEu0CRGfvs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/zWEu0CRGfvs<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.floatplane.com\/channel\/ForgottenWeapons\/home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/www.floatplane.com\/channel\/ForgottenWeapons\/home<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! <a href=\"http:\/\/shop.bbtv.com\/collections\/forgotten-weapons\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/shop.bbtv.com\/collections\/forgotten-weapons<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Contact:<br \/>\nForgotten Weapons<br \/>\n6281 N. Oracle #36270<br \/>\nTucson, AZ 85740<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Join the Kickstarter campaign and preorder your copy of Jonathan&#8217;s &#8220;Thorneycroft to SA80: British Bullpup Firearms 1901 &#8211; 2020&#8221;: https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/headstamp\/thorneycroft-to-sa80-british-bullpup-firearms-19012020?ref=wf5ub7 Sorry for the poor audio quality &#8211; today I am back at the Cody Firearms Museum talking to Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms &#038; Artillery at the Royal Armouries in the UK. Jonathan has written&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/22\/curtis-1866-the-first-bullpup-with-jonathan-ferguson\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Curtis 1866: The First Bullpup &#8211; with Jonathan Ferguson<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":10853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[89,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13007,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852\/revisions\/13007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}