[mauro]

Dear Fellows,
Let me add some points to what Gerben has already explained.
The Paul Mauser archive contains quite a big amount of data covering different areas as described in the web site.
We are proceeding in the analysis of the documents with two main projects: short term (articles) and long term (books). Additionally in July we will shoot a documentary for the television about the Paul Mauser life but we will provide more information about this project soon.
When new unpublished finds are discovered we discuss if we can simply publish them in an article or they will be part of a book.
For the C96 information, all the new data will be published in articles; in fact books are already available and what we plan to do is clarifying the early contracts with new unpublished information. This is what happens with the C96 Persian contract; these new finds are now available in an article published in USA, Italy and Germany. The article in USA is available since only a few days.
We have also quite a big amount of data about the production of the Mauser pistol model 1910. For this material, that it is fully unpublished, we are thinking about a book. In fact, the material is too big for one or more articles. Considering also the fact that until now there are no books focused on this production... in any case we are still deciding about this specific point.

Here some extract of the C96 Persian article.
The cover of the magazine:

The first page of the article:




Really nice new data have been found about the Italian C96 contract and in general the early contract. The Italian C96 contract will be available in October/November timeframe.
The photo below summarizes quite well the documents analysed...

A short description of the photo.
Starting from the background:
1) The business card of Mister Felice Grondona found in one of the Paul Mauser diary. Felice Grondona was the Italian importer of the Mauser pistols and rifles and also friend of Paul Mauser. Mr. Grondona was located in Milan and he has a crucial role in the contract management with the Italian Authorities. Paul Mauser wrote on the business card also an address; you can easily see it.
2) One of the Paul Mauser diaries where Mauser wrote about a meeting with Felice Grondona for the contract definition. You can see the Paul Mauser note written in black close to the grip of the flat side.
3) One of the letters available between the Italian MOD and Mauser for the contract definition. This letter is from the Italian Navy department to the Mauser company. You can notice when the letter has been posted in Italy (22 September 1908) and when has been processed in Mauser (30 September 1908).
Several letters are available and we can now describe not only the contract itself but also the logistic and the pistol maintenance based on the spare parts request.
4) An early flat side pistol from the original glass plates photos available in the archive. The Mauser Company had a huge glass plate’s photographical archive till the end of WWII containing a huge amount of photos. Some of these glass plates, altough really fragile (glass!!), survived until now and we are in the process of digitalizing them. It is not easy to do with the modern techniques but the quality of the result is amazing.
This is one of the first digitalization results of these glass plates’ photos. The analysis of the glass plated is really fascinating and this specific study should be definitely covered by an article.