Mauser. It's the family name whose notoriety in the firearms field rivals that of Browning. It's the company with the factory in Oberndorf that supplied rifles to German troops in two World Wars. It's the brand that became the standard for high-power magazine rifles across all of Africa. It's the mechanism that has endured after more than a century of refinement while other designs have appeared, flourished, then passed away.

Most shooters associate the Mauser moniker with the Model 1898 bolt rifle. This was not the first Mauser rifle, however. In fact, the 98 came about when Paul Mauser was 50 years old.

Like his contemporary John Browning, Peter Paul Mauser was a gifted designer who could think mechanisms onto paper and fashion parts without drafting them. Both men showed an uncanny ability to build guns that worked, with robust parts that didn't depend on tight tolerances for sure function. Both combined a mastery of mechanics with the artistry and inventiveness that marks genius.

Oddly enough, many riflemen still think of Mauser only as a machinist who adapted a door-latch to a firearm. Almost anybody could have done that, and some probably did it before Peter Paul Mauser.

In fact, one of his first experimental rifles derived from the turn-bolt action of the Dreyse needle-gun, German's primary shoulder arm in the Franco-Prussian War. The design intrigued an American, Samuel Norris, traveling in Europe as an agent for E. Remington & Sons. Norris offered Paul Mauser and his older brother Wilhelm financial incentive to convert the French Chassepot needle gun to fire metallic cartridges.

In 1867, they moved to Liege, Belgium, to begin work. When Norris failed to interest the French government in this new rifle, he bailed out of the agreement, and Paul and Wilhelm returned to Oberndorf. There the Mausers opened a gunshop, Wilhelm's business savvy complementing Paul's mechanical talent.

CZ's Model 550 utilizes a standard Mauser action for most chamberings; true big-bore calibers employ a square-bridge magnum action.

As the brothers struggled to establish their firearms business, the Royal Prussian Military Shooting School tested a Mauser rifle Norris had furnished earlier. It so impressed ordnance people that they asked the Mausers to make specific improvements.

They did and resubmitted the rifle, a single-shot breech-loader firing an 11mm black-powder cartridge. Early in 1872 the Mauser Model 1871 became the official Prussian shoulder arm. Elated, Paul and Wilhelm were soon informed that the Prussian army would pay them only 15 percent of what they'd been led to expect for design rights. Also, the new rifles were to be manufactured in government arsenals, not by the Mausers, who still needed work.

The brothers wound up with a contract to produce 3,000 sights for the Model 1871. A Bavarian order for 100,000 sights inspired them to build a factory in Oberndorf. Then the Wuerttemberg war ministry awarded Paul and Wilhelm a contract to build 100,000 rifles. To do this they formed a partnership with the Wuerttemberg Vereinsbank of Stuttgart to buy the Wuerttemberg Royal Armory. In February 1874, it became home to the new Mauser Bros. and Co.