OK. It seems that I got past that first photo hurdle, so let's try another to show a feature of the very early 1899 pre-production pieces. On the earliest examples, the front toggle link joint was square where it hinged on the rear toggle link, as opposed to the rounded configuration found on all later Lugers. Some of these early pieces were later modified to incorporate the radiused link, but they still retained the "short" T configuration. The "doctored" photo below shows this square link.
