What Ned Roberts Never Got to Say About the Round That Carries His Name

His name is on the cartridge. His design is not. Ned H. Roberts spent thirty years perfecting what he called the ideal .25-caliber cartridge. In 1928 he announced it to the world in American Rifleman. By 1934 Remington had commercialized it, changed the shoulder angle, loaded it soft, and put his name on the result. Roberts was still alive. He still had a column. And in January 1935 he published one careful article distinguishing his cartridge from theirs. Then he went quiet. This is the story of what a company does with a man's obsession when they decide to sell it and what it costs when the name stays but the design doesn't. The .257 Roberts is still in production. The argument about whether it ever lived up to its reputation is still happening at gun counters across America. Almost nobody in that argument knows about the January 1935 American Rifleman article. Now you will.