Come 1938, sales of the Thompson begin to pick up. Come 1928, Ryan passed away and by 1939, Auto-Ordnance had racked up substantial debts. Soon after, the Thompson begins to gain some amount of infamy for its use in gun crime in the 1920s. Sales are slow, however, and Auto-Ordnance begins to lose money. The weapon was fully developed by 1921, named the Thompson and marketing began. Before the weapon could be finished, however, the armistice was signed and development on the submachine gun slowed down tremendously. Designed for use in World War I, Payne designed a number of different iterations of the weapon, known as the Persuader and the Annihilator. With that in mind, work on the new submachine gun begins, with Oscar Payne being hired to design the new submachine gun. He later reported his findings to Thompson, who enthusiastically suggested that a submachine gun be developed instead of a self-loading rifle Thompson reportedly got up from his desk and started spraying the room with imaginary bullets using an imaginary submachine gun that he fired from the hip. While designing this new rifle, Eickhoff discovered a fatal flaw with Blish's system. Eickhoff is tasked by Thompson to design an self-loading rifle for the company while Thompson returned to active duty in the military. Ĭome 1916, with the financial backing of Thomas Fortune Ryan, Thompson founds the Auto-Ordnance Corporation and names Theodore Eickhoff (1885 – 1971) chief designer of the company. Thompson used his spare time to develop and study automatic weapons he finds a patent by a man named John Blish and negotiates with him to seek rights to the patent, while also seeking to finance his new developments in automatic small arms. Known for producing the Thompson submachine gun, the Auto-Ordnance Corporation was created by Thompson as a means for him to privately develop small arms.Īfter retiring from the United States Army in 1914, Gen. The Auto-Ordnance Corporation was an American firearms company founded in 1916 by John T.
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