PART I — Origins, Development & Early Adoption Chapter 2

**Chapter 2.

From 1903 to 1907 — T.C. Johnson’s Self-Loading Line and the Rise of the .351 WSL**

The story of the Model 1907 begins four years earlier, with an unassuming .22 rimfire that changed how Winchester saw the rifle. Standing at the edge of the 20th century, the company faced a world moving faster than any rifleman of the 1890s had imagined. Smokeless powder had rewritten the rules. Self-loading pistols were proving themselves in earnest. European armies were experimenting with autoloading rifles. And American shooters—hunters, guards, officers—were discovering that the speed of a lever-action was no longer the ceiling.

In New Haven, a quiet engineer named Thomas Crossley Johnson saw the future more clearly than most.

I. The Line-Up: Winchester Steps Into a New Century

If you place Winchester’s early self-loading rifles side-by-side—the Model 1903, 1905, 1907, and 1910—as in the period photograph above, the lineage is unmistakable. The stocks are classic American walnut. The lines are clean and understated. Every rifle looks like something a hunter could trust the moment it was lifted from its crate.

Yet beneath that simplicity lies a revolution.

The top rifle in that four-gun photograph, the Model 1903, is where everything starts. Below it, the 1905 stretches the system into centerfire. Beneath that, the 1907, longer, stronger, and unmistakably more serious. And at the bottom sits the 1910, the largest of the clan, chambered in .401 WSL for men who believed in excess as a virtue.

What unifies them is Johnson’s mechanism—balanced blowback, engineered with the intuition of a man who knew how far steel and springs could be pushed before they lost their honesty.

II. T.C. Johnson and the Birth of the Self-Loading Winchester

Johnson was not a flamboyant designer. He was the opposite—a meticulous engineer who preferred function over flourish. But what he built for Winchester between 1901 and 1907 put the company decades ahead of many competitors.

A sectionalized view of the Model 1903, shown in the black-and-white photograph above, reveals the heart of his thinking. Under the barrel sits a massive counterweight, part of a system of dual recoil springs, heavy breech block, and precision-timed geometry. This wasn’t a short-recoil or gas-driven rifle. It was pure blowback, but blowback refined to its absolute limits.

Johnson understood something fundamental:

If you add mass where the mechanism wants to move too quickly, the rifle becomes patient. And patient rifles are safe rifles.

The 1903 proved this elegantly. In .22 Winchester Automatic, it ran with surprising smoothness and reliability. This success encouraged Winchester leadership to try something bold: bring the self-loading concept into the centerfire arena.

III. The 1905 – First Steps Into Centerfire

The Model 1905 took Johnson’s mechanism and scaled it for two new cartridges: .32SL and .35SL. The rifle looked almost identical to the 1903, but it carried a detachable box magazine—an advanced concept for a sporting rifle in an era dominated by tubes and fixed internal boxes.

Yet the rifle had weaknesses. The .35SL cartridge, while innovative, lacked the authority Americans expected from a working rifle. Hunters found it marginal on deer. Guards found it adequate, but not impressive. Winchester had proven the system but not the cartridge.

Still, the 1905 was a necessary step—a rehearsal for the masterpiece waiting in the wings.

IV. The 1907 Arrives — A Modern Rifle for a Modern America

In 1907, Winchester unveiled something new: a stronger, lengthened receiver; reinforced blowback architecture; and a cartridge that finally answered the demands of hunters and guards who wanted real power with repeating speed.

The new round was the .351 Winchester Self-Loading, shown in scale beneath the 1907’s receiver in the final photograph you provided. Where the .35SL felt polite, the .351SL carried weight and purpose:

180-grain bullets
1,850–1,900 fps from a 20″ barrel
Energy that nudged into the territory of the .30-30 Winchester

To the men who carried rifles for real work—railroad guards, express messengers, timber hunters, and later, police—the .351 felt like the first self-loader that meant business.

Mechanically, the rifle preserved Johnson’s simplicity but added the muscle required to handle the new pressures:

A heavier breech block
A longer, strengthened receiver
Revised spring geometry
Magazines available in multiple capacities

It was still blowback—but blowback at its limit, executed with Winchester’s trademark steel and confidence.

V. Culture Meets Technology: The N.C. Wyeth Moment

One of the most iconic period illustrations—painted by N.C. Wyeth for a Winchester catalog, shown above—captures a pair of hunters on a snowy ridge facing down a black bear. The lead hunter shoulders a Winchester self-loader, the blue steel catching the light, the rifle held with the urgency only a semi-auto can claim.

The art mattered.

Winchester knew that a technological shift needed emotional acceptance. The illustration delivered that in one stroke. It portrayed the self-loading rifle not as an experimental contraption, but as a rugged, trustworthy companion in America’s wildest places.

It told the market:

This is not a novelty. This is the next step in the American rifle tradition.

VI. A Rifle Matures Into Its Purpose

By the time the 1907 reached the hands of hunters and guards, the blowback system that began in the petite 1903 had evolved into a remarkably capable platform. The 1907 retained the quick, instinctive character of a lever gun but required no motion beyond the trigger—an advantage hunters understood the first time they fired a second shot without lifting their cheek from the stock.

The rifle’s reputation spread quickly: