Thompson Center Arms
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Firearms |
| Founded | 1965 |
| Founder | K. W. Thompson Tool & Warren Center |
| Headquarters | Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S |
| Products | rifles, pistols |
| Parent | Smith & Wesson |
| Website | http://www.tcarms.com/ |
Thompson/Center Arms is an American firearms company based in Springfield, Massachusetts. The company is best known for its line of interchangeable-barrel, single-shot pistols and rifles. Thompson/Center also manufactures muzzle-loading rifles and is credited with creating the resurgence of their use in the 1970s.
In the 1960s, Warren Center developed an unusual break-action, single-shot pistol that later became known as the Contender in his basement workshop. Meanwhile, the K.W. Thompson Tool Company had been searching for a product to manufacture year-round. In 1965, Warren Center joined the K.W. Thompson Tool Company, and together, they announced Warren Center's Contender pistol in 1967. Although it sold for more than comparable hunting revolvers, the flexibility of being able to shoot multiple calibers by simply changing out the barrel and sights and its higher accuracy soon made it popular with handgun hunters. As K.W. Thompson Tool began marketing Center's Contender pistol, the company name was changed to Thompson/Center Arms Company. Then, in 1970, Thompson/Center created the modern black powder industry, introducing Warren Center's Hawken-styled black powder muzzle-loader rifle.
On January 4, 2007, Thompson/Center was purchased by Smith & Wesson.
On December 8, 2010, Smith & Wesson announced that the original Rochester, New Hampshire plant would be closed and manufacturing was transferred to Springfield, Massachusetts.
Thompson/Center's success came with the emergence of long range handgun hunting, target shooting, and, especially, metallic silhouette shooting. Their break-action, single-shot design brought rifle-like accuracy and power in a handgun, which was a new concept at the time. Originally designed only for interchangeable barrels in .38 Special and .22 LR, subsequent handgun developments by Thompson/Center led to a wider range of interchangeable barrels for use with many more cartridges. Opening and closing the break-open action is accomplished by squeezing the outside bottom of the trigger guard toward the grip/buttstock, at which time the action opens, and an extractor manually extracts the cartridge.
The Contender, first introduced in 1967, is a break-action, single-shot pistol or rifle with a number of unique features. The first unique feature is the way the barrel is attached to the frame. By removing the fore-end, a large hinge pin is exposed; by pushing this hinge pin out, the barrel can be removed. Since the sights and extractor remain attached to the barrel in the Contender design, the frame itself contains no cartridge-specific features. A barrel of another caliber can be installed and pinned in place, the fore-end replaced, and the pistol is ready to shoot with a different barrel and pre-aligned sights. This allowed easy changes of calibers, sights, and barrel lengths, with only a flat screwdriver being required for change-out.
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