David Marshall Williams (November 13, 1900 – January 8, 1975) was an American firearms designer and convicted murderer who invented the floating chamber and the short-stroke gas piston.

James Claude Williams was a wealthy and influential landowner of hundreds of acres in and around Godwin, North Carolina.

Ligon, owner of the academy, who found Williams had shipped the stocks from the rifles home and refused to return them.

[1] On August 11, 1918, in Cumberland County, he married Margaret Cooke and they later had one child, David Marshall Jr. After his marriage, he obtained employment as a manual laborer with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.

[6] On November 25, 1921, Williams received a sentence of a “term of Thirty Years at hard labor, to wear felon stripes” for the murder of Deputy Pate.

On the same day, one of the black workers employed by Williams, Ham Dawson, was indicted and tried in Cumberland County Superior Court on the charge of secret assault on Deputy Pate.

[7][8][9] While serving time at the Caledonia State Prison Farm in Halifax County, North Carolina, Williams related that the superintendent, H.T.

His skills in the machine shop permitted him to stay ahead of his assignments and allowed him time to develop his ideas for self-loading firearms.

His mother sent him a drafting set and technical data on guns and eventually provided him with patent attorney contacts, who were unable to help him as long as he was incarcerated.

All four rifles are part of the permanent David Marshall Williams display in the North Carolina Museum of History.

This application detailed his concept for the use of the high-pressure gas in or near the breech to operate the action of a semi-automatic firearm.

The application and subsequent patent detail several different designs to accomplish this, including the floating chambers he manufactured on the four rifles he built while imprisoned.

Also designed by Williams, the conversion unit could be used to convert the 1911A1 .45 ACP pistol to .22 long rifle caliber rimfire for training.

had started trials of a number of submissions for a light rifle design that would eventually be chambered for the .30 caliber Carbine cartridge.

Winchester initially decided against developing a submission because of other commitments that included the Browning prototype being worked on by Williams.

When Williams produced the 7.5 lb (3.4 kg) Model G30R, it convinced Winchester they should be able to come up with a prototype for the light rifle trials.

[17] The receiver, rotating bolt, slide, and short-stroke gas piston used on this first prototype were based on those used by Williams to produce the Model G30R.

[16] The preliminary tests of the first prototype by the Ordnance Department on August 9, 1941, proved the design had sufficient merit for Winchester to proceed with the development and submit a light rifle by the September 15, 1941, deadline for the final trials.

For the second prototype, Winchester formed a second team consisting of the two prior employees and others with Williams as the project director.

On September 12, 1941, the second prototype light rifle designed by the team was complete and ready for submission but for two problems that had yet to be resolved.

Williams was asked to help the others sort out the problems, and collectively solutions were found that allowed the prototype to be transported and submitted to the Ordnance Department by the deadline.

In February 1942, the Ordnance Department proposed a one-time lump sum royalty payment of $886,000 in exchange for a royalty-free production license.

On March 19, 1942, Williams voluntarily entered into another agreement with Winchester, accepting 26.411 percent of this lump sum ($234,100.46 over and above his salary) in lieu of royalty payments.

Williams assisted Winchester throughout the war on a number of smaller projects, including the design and development of the rear flip sight for the M1 carbines.

During newspaper, magazine, and radio interviews stimulated by the movie, Williams repeated his story as presented in Army Carbine: The Rifle that was Born in Prison.

Williams eventually donated his personal collection and entire workshop to the North Carolina Museum of History.

In 1972, David Marshall Williams was admitted to Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Organic brain syndrome (OBS) is decreased mental function owing to a medical disease other than a psychiatric illness.

Williams is buried in the cemetery of the Old Bluff Presbyterian Church near Wade, North Carolina.

[20] While the legend of “Carbine Williams” has garnered Williams more attention over the years, his design, redesign, and development of firearms that used the high-pressure gas in or near the breech to operate their semi-automatic action have remained a significant contribution used in the design and development of new firearms and as a starting point for other inventors to come up with new ideas.