I am trying to reduce the size of the photographs I took of our prototype pistols and the fixtures we used to create the R9 Series Pistol. I hope you find this entertaining. It certainly has historic value and I hope those of you who own our firearm get a kick out of this photo history of "The World's Small and Lightest 9mm Handgun" and "The Shooting Illustrated Handgun of the Year for 2005". I have quite a few shots, so it will take me a few days to get them all up here with notes about each one.
This First Photograph: Top left: 1st. fixture to see if the predecessor to the R9 (actually a .380 at that point) would fire. That fixture was placed behind a steel barrier and placed in a ransom rest with a pull string on the trigger. We did not want to get hurt if things went wrong. Karl Rohrbaugh was at the helm. It worked fine, however, this first prototype was interesting in that we had a pressed fit barrel in a sleeve. Karl pulled the string, the round ignited and the bullet went downrange, followed by the barrel insert! lol.
Second Photograph: Top right: Our First full frame attempt, which had "Safegun" technology. (patented)
Third Photograph. Bottom left: Second full frame for the early .380
Forth Photograph. Bottom middle: Prototype R9 9mm frame.
Fifth Photograph. Bottom right: Complete version of our Original gun. It was a .380 ACP Pistol with "Safegun" technology. You had to wear a neodymium magnetic ring to activate the trigger mechanism. That was dropped after a long discussion by me with my brother Karl. Karl agreed to drop the "Safegun" trigger design and just make the plain gun without that feature, which really helped in our marketing early on by the way. You can see the prototype ring just below that gun in the lower right hand corner.
Enjoy!
Eric C. Rohrbaugh
