So I’ve been fooling with a vintage Frommer Stop this week. You do know of Rudolf Frommer, a bespectacled and balding banker who resembled the fictional Ernst Stavro Blofeld and, among other claims to fame, compiled the first Hungarian-German Stock Exchange dictionary of terms, yes?
Although not a trained engineer, after the banker joined the management of the Hungarian gun company FEG in 1896 to help it restructure after insolvency, he started taking out patents on his early semi-auto pistol designs. While interesting, they were over-engineered. However, they worked and over 300,000 of his Stop models were produced between 1910 and 1929, seeing service with military and police forces throughout Central Europe in both World Wars.