Odkolek 1899 experimental machine gun
The name of the designer Adolf, a freeman Odkolk from Újezd (1.12.1854-2.1.1917) is mainly associated with the products of the French company Société Anonyme des Anciens Hotchkiss et Cie, which bought Odkolk’s patents for an air-cooled automatic weapon. The Hotchkiss Mle 1897, Mle 1900 and Mle 1914 air-cooled machine guns were widely used by the French army during the Second World War.
Adolf Odkolek came from an ancient noble family from Újezda near Mladá Boleslav and spent the years 1873-1896 in the army, mostly in Hulan regiments. In 1880-1881 he attended the Army Rifle School, after which he was appointed a weapons officer, i.e. regimental armourer. His interest in the design of weapons undoubtedly had its roots here. In 1889, he designed a repeating rifle with a comb-operated bolt by means of a pinion and a movable bow, for which he received, among other things, German Patent No. 49,189 of 28 February 1889.
Ten years later, he began to design an air-cooled, self-loading gun, the key elements of which he applied for patent protection in November 1899. He received German patent No. 123 900 for the design of the bolt mechanism with folding bolt and gas pressure relief on the piston, and the trigger mechanism with firing mode switch was protected by patent No. 123 203.
Odkolek seems to have been involved in improving and marketing his first machine gun alongside other design work for quite a long time, as he applied for patent protection for the same weapon in Switzerland in May 1900 and the Kriegstechnische Abteilung (KTA) there reportedly tested it at the Waffenfabrik Bern as late as 1910. No other information on Odkolk’s earliest automatic weapon has been found. Whatever the fate of Odkolk’s first machine gun, it undoubtedly formed the basis of his later works.
In the museum collections there is one rare example of this weapon, marked only with the number 1, with a missing firing mode switch. Its mechanism is otherwise fully functional. It is undoubtedly only a test specimen, as indicated by the unmarked scale of the sight plate. The weapon was fed by a belt of now unknown design, fed into the weapon from above via a hinged feeder. A movable pistol grip, secured against unintentional movement by a latch, was used to tension the slide. For many decades the specimen remained unidentified in collections, only in recent years has it been identified with the help of patent literature.
The museum acquired the specimen by transferring it from older collections.
Calibre: 7,92 mm Mauser
Overall length: 1365 mm
Barrel length: 763 mm
Intentional length: 750 mm (missing sight slide with plate, scale unmarked)
Weight: 10 500 g
