John Moses Browning, the legendary American gun designer, invented the
first practical self-loading shotgun in 1898. It must be noted, that at the time the autoloading shotgun was something of absolute novelty, and the task of designing such gun was severely complicated by the fact that the switch over from black powder to smokeless ammunition was well under way, and general quality of shotgun ammunition was rather uneven,to say the least. Nevertheless, Browning managed to make his prototype model work, and work well.