Arthur William Savage

Arthur William Savage
Newspaper photo Arthur Savage and a new steel tire, circa 1911
Born	Arthur William Savage (1857-05-19)May 19, 1857 Kingston, Jamaica, British West Indies
Died	September 22, 1938(1938-09-22) (aged 81) San Diego, California, United States
Occupation	Inventor, explorer, businessman
Spouse(s)	Annie Bryant
Children	Arthur John Savage

Arthur William Savage (May 13, 1857 – September 22, 1938), was a businessman, inventor and explorer. He is most famous as the inventor of the Savage Model 99 a famously innovative lever-action rifle, which remained in production for over 100 years, and the founder of Savage Arms, a gun company. However, his most lasting and valuable inventions may be radial tires, and it has been argued, the modern detachable box magazine used in almost all modern military firearms. He also invented an early torpedo and built and raced cars.

He was born in Kingston, Jamaica, British West Indies. His father was Welsh, a special commissioner to the West Indies, charged with setting up an educational system for the slaves emancipated in 1834. He attended schools in Britain and Baltimore, MD in the United States and had a classical education. He married, and had eight children. Four were boys, four were girls.

In the late 1880s he took his family to Australia, homesteading in a covered wagon. He came to own what was then the largest cattle ranch in Australia. Eleven years later he sold it and bought a coffee plantation in Jamaica. In 1892 he moved to Utica New York, and hired himself to a railroad, the Utica Belt Line Street Railroad (See List of New York railroads). He also got part-time work at a gun factory, the Utica Hammer Magazine Company.

Savage, and his son Arthur John began designing guns. His first model, in 1887, was a lever-action rifle with the magazine in the stock, rather than under the barrel.

Six years later, he patented a lever-action rifle able to shoot then-modern guncotton military center-fire cartridges with .303-caliber spitzer bullets. This "Model 95" was the direct predecessor of the model 99. Savage invented a novel rotary magazine rifle. A benefit of this magazine was that it had a cartridge counter on the left side of the receiver that enabled the shooter to tell how many cartridges remained in the magazine. Lacking sufficient manufacturing capacity the first 9600 ( plus or minus ) Model 1895 rifles were contracted to be built by Marlin Repeating Arms and are so marked with the JM proof mark. {< The Savage 99 - Douglas Murray >}