History:
In 1906 the Belgian company "Fabrique National d'Armes de Guerre" put a vestpocket-pistol on the market, which was desingned by the brilliant American arms-designer John M. Browning and which is agreed to be the first real automatic vestpocket-pistol , that one could carry along in clothing or handbag . Now not only different gunmakers like Nicholas Dreyse or the Steyr-factories wanted to participate in that market, but also small companies got involved in this market-segment, which seemed to give chances especially for middle-sized workshops too.
Walther, who up to that time mainly was busy with the manufacture and the sale of sporting- and hunting-guns, wanted to deal on this area too. The times began to become unsecure. The number of robberies on pedestrians in bad or wholly unlighted streets were increasing. And as Walther belived that the citizens wanted to protect themselves against such surprises, he wanted to offer them a selfloading pistol, which one could easily carry along.
However he didn't copy the "Browning-pistol" like so many others, but developed an own construction. Already the first design out of the year 1908 showed the independent way of thinking. in August 8. 1909 Carl Walther got his first patent with number 235 994 for his construction of the "Modell 1".
The pistol sold good, which not at last was caused by the reason, that it was praised as first German vestpocket-pistol.
It seems, that the factory-numbers of the Walther Models 1 to 9 (except 6) were numbered consecutive, without relation to the model . Of course there were used number-blocks, but they unfortunately have not been recorded. Therefore it is inpossible today to tell the amount of pieces made. Based on the series-numbers reported it seems however, that the Model 1 was made together with it's sister-models at least until 1912.
Technical Datas:
SYSTEM: self-cocking pistol with mass system and firing pin
CARTRIDGES : 6
CALIBRE : .25 ACP
BARREL LENGTH : 53 mm , 6 grooves right hand twisting
WEIGHT EMPTY : 365 g
TOTAL LENGTH : 113 mm
TOTAL HEIGHT : 80 mm
TOTAL WIDTH : 22 mm
TRIGGER : Single Action
SIGHT : groove an leafe front sight
SAFETY : safety-lever
FINISH : blued
GRIPS : hard rubber