The end of a firearm era
Born in Vienna, Austria on 19 July 1929, and trained as an engineer, Herr Gaston Glock obtained the first of more than 50 patents in 1953 and founded the company that bears his name, GLOCK Ges.m.b.H in 1963.
Spending over a decade as a manufacturer of injection molding parts and components located in the town of Deutsch-Wagram in Lower Austria, working with just three employees on a second-hand metal press, his first successful military contracts were not for a gun but for an entrenching tool and field knife for the Austrian Army. The latter blade, the polymer-handled and sheathed Feldmesser 78, paved the way for bigger things.
Glock followed up the knife tender with designs for grenade casings and belt links for machine guns. Then, in 1980, he submitted a new pistol design for the Austrian military that came out on top in testing against entries from some of the biggest gun companies in the world. That gun, adopted as the P80 in Austria and using patents filed in 1981, went on to become the Glock 17– so named because it was the 17th patent procured by the company.
Leaving behind a legacy of five generations of polymer-framed striker-fired pistols that carried his name, Gaston Glock died on Thursday, aged 94.
