The Guns That DESTROYED the Men Who Invented Them

America's most famous rifle carries the name of a man who never designed a gun in his life. Oliver Winchester made shirts. The rifle that made his name immortal was built by a gunsmith named Benjamin Tyler Henry, who died in an obscurity most Americans have never heard of. And Henry is only the first name on a longer list. Walter Hunt. Benjamin Tyler Henry. Christian Sharps. John Garand. Four men, four rifles, four eras. Each built a gun the country fell in love with. Each watched the fortune, or the name, or both, settle onto somebody else. The hands made the thing. Another name went on it. And no one ever counted the cost. In this video: Walter Hunt, who invented a repeating rifle decades ahead of its time, sold the patent to clear a debt, and died before his idea made anyone rich — including him How a New Haven shirtmaker became the most famous name in American firearms without filing a single rifle in his life The moment Henry tried to take the entire company through a legislative side door while Winchester was in Europe — and what Winchester did when he came back Why the injustice done to Henry and the thing Henry himself attempted are both true at the same time Christian Sharps, who held a dollar-per-gun royalty on one of the most respected rifles in the country, sold it off anyway, and died of tuberculosis while the company bearing his name kept building without him John Garand, who got the one thing the others were denied — his own name permanently fixed to his creation — and still never earned a dollar in royalties on six million rifles Why the name turned out to be the cheapest part of the deal