The Borchardt held a seven-round magazine of 7.65 caliber rounds. It functioned well enough, but was bulky and had unexpectedly fierce recoil. The mainspring and lock workings were housed in the bulge behind the grip.
A worthy design for its time, the Borchardt was quickly rendered obsolete by a torrent of better automatic pistol designs…
Unlike the other designs extant at the time, the C93 went into commercial production, and 3000 were ultimately made.
The gun was safe and reliable, and it set the standard for locating a detachable box magazine in the grip, which remains the standard today. However, its very bulky mainspring assembly led to it being a rather awkward handgun to use…
Borchardt’s talents came hand-in-hand with a fair amount of hubris, and he refused to consider the possibility that his pistol could be improved. Several military trials requested a smaller and handier version of the gun, and when Borchardt refused to make those changes, DWM gave the job to a man named Georg Luger. Luger was very good at taking existing designs and improving them, and he transformed the basic action of the C93 into the Luger automatic pistol, which of course became one of the most iconic handguns ever made.
Ian’s video [10:41] https://youtu.be/ItpOBQFVIhM
…
Who wouldn’t expect it? All that weight on the back and the spring would push the back down.
Like if you wanted to intentionally make a gun have ridiculous recoil, you probably couldn’t beat that design. The weight distribution alone is crazy.
Luger putting the magazine ahead of the grip solved all those problems, and the gun was still the same overall length
I think Ian was referring to how it used a relatively weak cartridge. And then, as you mentioned, how its design exacerbated perceived effects.
There’s a lot about the design we can critique but I think this is a “he walked so others could run” scenario.