I hope this will help.

This afternoon I've gone through the US Patent Office pre-1976 database to find the April 17, 1894 patent.  It was somewhat slow going because that database is now accessible only by patent number, which, of course, is very, very seldom noted in pre-1900 references.

But for those who don't already know, the patent is 518,448, issued to Chicopee's Edward H. Elder and applied for by him on January 06, 1894.

Now, Elder was undoubtedly developing his action in 1893 or even earlier, but I have never even heard of a Stevens based thereon with no patent markings, let alone marked with some equivalent of "Patent Applied For".

Therefore, the Stevens 1894 catalog would surely be the best candidate to carry the first general-public announcement of the company's new gun.

Next, Redsetter notes that Grant's two pages have 3 illustrations while mine have only 2.  So Grant's catalog is not mine.  Does that absolutely prove that Grant had an 1894 catalog?  Unfortunately, no, for we don't know whether his catalog was complete or, being incomplete, he assumed it was an 1894 because it used the loose term "new".  Moreover, if his catalog was incomplete, he might even have had a later version of the 1895 catalog (Stevens is known to have issued multiple catalogs/supplements in a given year) or even an 1896 catalog.

Which brings us back to Redsetter's Cornell reprint.  As I noted earlier, that reprint has significantly fewer pages than my 1895 and 1898 catalogs.  Therefore, again, my best guess is that the Cornell reprint is not mislabeled but "incomplete" for any of several possible reasons.

Last, for me the most pertinent question is still: is it the 1896 or the 1897 catalog (not Cornell's 17 page "price reduction" supplement) that contains the last mention of the 107-110 series?  (In the 1898 catalog the 44 has become the "Ideal" rifle and is offered in upgrades from 45 through 55.)

Bill Lawrence

In the 1895 catalog (and in Grant's?), the 107-110 rifles are referred to as the "Ideal".  By 1898, the "Ideal" moniker had been transferred to the 44.  All's fair in love, war, and advertising, especially in this case, since I wonder if the new "new Ideal" line wasn't mostly one of Page's ideas for sprucing the Steven's image up.  If so, I'd say it worked.

You could well be right about the loading tools inspiring the name.

Bill Lawrence

Why don't we name it now?  How about Shooter's Dream?

Schuetzenmiester wrote on May 30^th, 2018 at 7:29pm:


Not bad at all.  (Esp. since "Rifleman's Rifle" has already been taken.)

uscra112 wrote on May 30^th, 2018 at 10:42pm:


I wouldn't--not if it contradicts Grant, who had the benefit of many more yrs of research devoted to this subject, which was for Sharpe not a principal interest. Not that he made it up--can easily imagine someone at the Stevens plant telling him this, mistakenly, when he was accumulating his data in the '30s.

In my mind, Sharpe's credibility is forever tarnished by his circulation (if not invention) of the Winchester A5 "compensating errors" myth.   

Redsetter wrote on May 30^th, 2018 at 11:34pm:


Actually, there is no contradiction, as Grant quotes the same date of '96 in his first book, p. 65.