Alvin,
A lot has been written about the early trials but basically the procedure was:
-A 'contest' is held whereby several pistols of several suppliers are being tested against each other and reference guns.
-From that 'contest' a few winners emerge. These go to the next round, improvements can be made, more thorough testing is done until finally a favorite emerges.
-Then the favorite is subjected to field trials. A sample amount of pistols is divided over a representative part of the army, preferably all departments and it is tested in practice for a while.
-Then a decision is made to either accept or reject the gun.
Many pistols described as 'prototypes' actually are field trial guns.
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