Pedersen device
semi-automatic adapter for the M1903 Springfield rifle
The Pedersen device was an experimental weapon attachment for the M1903 Springfield bolt action rifle that allowed it to fire a .30 caliber (7.62 mm) pistol-type cartridge in semi-automatic fire mode. The attachment was developed to allow an infantryman to convert "their rifle to a form of submachine gun or automatic rifle" in approximately 15 seconds.
Production of the Pedersen device and modified M1903 rifles started in 1918. However, World War I ended before they could be fielded. The contract was cancelled on March 1, 1919, after production of 65,000 devices, 1.6 million magazines, 65 million cartridges, and 101,775 modified Springfield rifles.
The devices, magazines, ammunition and rifles were subsequently placed in storage, and declared surplus in 1931. When the United States Army decided they did not want to pay the cost of storing the devices, nearly all of the stored devices were destroyed except for a few examples kept by the Ordnance Department. Fewer than 100 Pedersen devices escaped ordered destruction to become extremely rare collector's items.
History
Prior to the United States' entry into World War I, John Pedersen, a longtime employee of Remington Arms, developed the Pedersen device. His idea was to dramatically increase the firepower available to the average infantryman.
“Pedersen device” enters the record as semi-automatic adapter for the M1903 Springfield rifle. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pedersen, device and semi-automatic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q604366. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1918, 1919 and 1931.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pedersen device” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.