BY Herschel Smith
8 years, 6 months ago
Concerning this post, I exchanged comments as follows
Herschel Smith • 11 hours ago He’s not the AR-15 inventor. He took a Eugene Stoner design and adapted it for 0.223.
Yes and no (see e.g. this interview.)
I’d go for “developer” more than “inventor”; the AR-10 wasn’t “invented” in quite the way the AR-10 was, since as you say, it was an adaptation.
But enough of one – and he did enough of the work – that he deserves a lot of the credit for the AR-15 specifically, if not the basic gas impingement/folding-receiver/etc. design elements.
I stand by what I said. The DI system was Eugene’s. I’m willing to go this far. I’ll call Sullivan the “draftsman/designer” if you stipulate that Eugene Stoner was the one who “engineered” the weapon. They all worked for Stoner and did what he told them to do.
There is a difference between being an engineer and designer. The AR-15 belongs to Eugene Stoner.
On June 3, 2016 at 5:27 pm, Pat Hines said:
Yes, definitely Stoner’s design. No one could design a lighter weight system that would blow clear the dirt than the DI system.
Engineering a design for high volume production isn’t the same as doing the basic design at all.